\r\n","cleanDescription":" ","publish_start_moment":"2014-07-09T11:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.927Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f99a","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1f6","title":"Growing Pains, Solved","slug":"nm-living-july-2014-87077","image_id":"58b4b24a4c2774661570f500","meta_title":"How to: Lush gardens in an arid landscape","meta_description":"The landscape of New Mexico and the greater southwest is treasured for its sparseness, but foliage loving gardeners may be disappointed by the lack of water. Don't fret, there are several ways to work around the dry heat with low-water and hardy plants.","open_graph_title":"How to: Lush gardens in an arid landscape","open_graph_description":"The landscape of New Mexico and the greater southwest is treasured for its sparseness, but foliage loving gardeners may be disappointed by the lack of water. Don't fret, there are several ways to work around the dry heat with low-water and hardy plants.","publish_start":"2014-07-09T11:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c83bb81f16f9392cf09b52","58b4b2404c2774661570f2fb","58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_photo_credit":"Charles Mann","custom_tagline":"Ten tips for beautifying your property, under tough conditions.","created":"2014-07-09T11:22:04.000Z","legacy_id":"87077","version_id":"5b60b7e225bdbb3371bc39e4","description_raw":"

FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green, pine green, cholla green, and more shades appear. Put a spade into soil, add some compost, sprinkle with water, and you might even coax red, yellow, pink, and purple from trees, shrubs, vegetables, flowers, and succulents.

\r\n\r\n

Desert gardens provide challenges only worsened by our ongoing regional drought. But this isn’t Death Valley—it’s still the Land of Enchantment. Here are a few first steps to invite beauty into your yard.

\r\n\r\n

1. XERISCAPE, DON’T ZERO-SCAPE\r\nBorn in 1981, the word xeriscape defines a type of low-water-use landscaping (xeros means dry in Greek). As it gained popularity, a few folks went overboard, coating their yards in nomaintenance gravel.

\r\n\r\n

Rocks play an important role in defining your yard, minimizing weeds, and making a star out of the plants you fall in love with, but they shouldn’t steal the show. Xeriscape appeals to minimalists. Done right, its spare number of well-chosen species thrive on mere sips of water.

\r\n\r\n

One of the best practitioners of the art is Albuquerque-based landscape designer Judith Phillips (judithphillipsdesignoasis.com). She’s written four books with tips on mapping out designs, choosing water-wise plants, and tending them. My favorites: Southwestern Landscaping with Native Plants (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987) and New Mexico Gardener’s Guide (Cool Springs Press, 2005).

\r\n\r\n

2. HERE’S THE DIRT\r\nUnless you’re lucky enough to live on an old floodplain, your soil has too much sand, too much clay, or too much caliche. For certain, the pH level is too alkaline; most plants seem to adore higher acid levels. To ascertain your soil’s profile and how it should be amended, collect a sample using a soil kit provided by your county’s Cooperative Extension Service, then mail it to their recommended lab at Colorado State University. Find its address, among others, at mynm.us/soillabs. (You’ll also want to bookmark aces.nmsu.edu/ aes/labs.html. This site contains an encyclopedia’s worth of advice on every agri-thing.) You can learn a lot on your own simply by spading around the yard and eyeballing your dirt. Chances are, it lacks organic matter and needs healthy helpings of aged manure, leaf mold, sawdust, straw, or store-bought compost. Dig it in at least as deep as a shovel head— or as much as your back muscles tolerate. Rule of Yard Work No. 1: The garden will bend to your abilities faster than your abilities will rise to its demands.

\r\n\r\n

3. MOTHER NATURE KNOWS BEST\r\nGo on lots of hikes and study what you see. What kinds of plants bask in the sun? Which seek shelter in the shade? Do certain plants cluster around boulders? Mimic those cues in your yard and you’re one step closer to practicing permaculture—a type of ecological design that works with nature rather than against it. Good sources for purchasing native plants include Plants of the Southwest, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the Santa Ana Pueblo’s Native Plant Nursery.

\r\n\r\n

4. BE A BUSY-BODY\r\nNew Mexico’s micro-zones can outsmart your plans. Plants that thrive even a few miles away may wither in your yard. Visit the neighbors to see what they have blooming. Walk around the block. Take a garden tour. Ask everyone what they did right. And wrong.

\r\n\r\n

5. GET SCHOOLED\r\nCounty Cooperative Extension Services throughout the state offer Master Gardener trainings every year, and often the graduates hold one-day workshops on topics like pruning or dealing with pests. Check them out online or give your county’s office a jingle. Besides Judith Phillips’ books, good titles include the Sunset Western Garden Book (Oxmoor House, 2007), the basic bible for general reference; Down to Earth: A Gardener’s Guide to the Albuquerque Area, by Albuquerque Master Gardeners; and Baker H. Morrow’s Best Plants for New Mexico Gardens and Landscapes (University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Morrow’s book separates the state into regions, a handy tool given the vast differences in altitude. High Country Gardens puts its years of wisdom online (highcountrygardens.com).

\r\n\r\n

6. THE ESSENTIAL TOOLS\r\nIn time, you may own a wheelbarrow, chain saw, post-hole digger, pitchfork, hoe, edger, three kinds of pruners, various spades, and more. Until then, keep it simple. You can’t do a thing without a pair of gloves and a big strong shovel. If your soil contains clay or caliche, invest in a pickax. A heavy bow rake moves soil; a leaf rake sweeps the top clean. For hand tools, a trowel and pruners will go a long way. Add a bottle of ibuprofen to soothe the muscles all that work strains.

\r\n\r\n

7. CONSIDER CONTAINERS\r\nI’ve grown tomatoes, kale, herbs, fennel, and chile in patio pots. Santa Fe–based Grow Y’Own sells raised garden beds with hooped tops for creating year-round mini-greenhouses. The aluminum watering troughs sold at feed stores make cool pots with a sleek-but-stillcountry style. Containers offer complete control over soil, are easy to water, eliminate stoop labor, and dissuade rabbits. Drainage can be a problem, so make sure the bottom of whatever you use has holes. The deeper the container, the more soil you’ll need. Consider starting with a layer of rocks. The oft-trumpeted Styrofoam-peanut layer sounds like lightweight fun until you need to tend the soil. Rule of Yard Work No. 2: In a yard or a container, you will need to tend the soil for the rest of your garden’s life.

\r\n\r\n

8. TOP IT OFF\r\nDesert sun and spring winds strip moisture from that modified soil. A layer of mulch slows down evaporation and suppresses weeds. A few inches of organic material, rocks, tumbled glass, or even shredded rubber will work. Organic choices include pine needles, bark, pecan shells, leaves, straw, and grass clippings. Once they decompose, you can work them into the soil. Check to see if your local landfill composts green waste and offers it for sale by the truckload.

\r\n\r\n

9. A THIRST THAT KILLS\r\nEven if you amend the soil and pick perfect plants, rainfall alone won’t suffice. Forget sprinklers—they’re best at watering the air. Drip irrigation is the gold standard for New Mexico. Give it a helping hand when planting trees or shrubs by creating an earthen moat to hold a puddle of water. Rainwater zooms off any hard surface. Capture roof runoff in rain barrels (Tijeras Rain Barrels sells them in a variety of cheery colors and finishes), or terrace your yard so that each tier slows down the streams. Permaculturists use pumice wicks, gabions, swales, and other water tricks. Read Harvest the Rain: How to Enrich Your Life by Seeing Every Storm as a Resource, by Santa Fe’s Nate Downey (Sunstone Press, 2010), or visit sfpermaculture.com. (And see our April 2013 article “The Lush Life,” mynm.us/downey13.)

\r\n\r\n

10. REALITY BITES\r\nRule of Yard Work No. 3: Things go wrong. Temperatures soar, hail falls, rabbits nibble, and the lowly bark beetle lays waste to entire forests. Why bother? Like a lot of things in life, gardening is more about the process than the goal. Learn some science. Play with design principles. Spend hours outdoors working your mind, body, and spirit as you till the soil and baby the tender sprouts. Wrap your heart around the act of gardening and the actual garden will follow, beautiful and imperfect, together as one.

\r\n\r\n

Kate Nelson lives and gardens in Placitas.

","teaser_raw":"

FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green,

FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green,

","description":"FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green, pine green, cholla green, and more shades appear. Put a spade into soil, add some compost, sprinkle with water, and you might even coax red, yellow, pink, and purple from trees, shrubs, vegetables, flowers, and succulents. Desert gardens provide challenges only worsened by our ongoing regional drought. But this isn’t Death Valley—it’s still the Land of Enchantment. Here are a few first steps to invite beauty into your yard. 1. XERISCAPE, DON’T ZERO-SCAPE Born in 1981, the word xeriscape defines a type of low-water-use landscaping (xeros means dry in Greek). As it gained popularity, a few folks went overboard, coating their yards in nomaintenance gravel. Rocks play an important role in defining your yard, minimizing weeds, and making a star out of the plants you fall in love with, but they shouldn’t steal the show. Xeriscape appeals to minimalists. Done right, its spare number of well-chosen species thrive on mere sips of water. One of the best practitioners of the art is Albuquerque-based landscape designer Judith Phillips ( judithphillipsdesignoasis.com ). She’s written four books with tips on mapping out designs, choosing water-wise plants, and tending them. My favorites: Southwestern Landscaping with Native Plants (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987) and New Mexico Gardener’s Guide (Cool Springs Press, 2005). 2. HERE’S THE DIRT Unless you’re lucky enough to live on an old floodplain, your soil has too much sand, too much clay, or too much caliche. For certain, the pH level is too alkaline; most plants seem to adore higher acid levels. To ascertain your soil’s profile and how it should be amended, collect a sample using a soil kit provided by your county’s Cooperative Extension Service, then mail it to their recommended lab at Colorado State University. Find its address, among others, at mynm.us/soillabs. (You’ll also want to bookmark aces.nmsu.edu/ aes/labs.html. This site contains an encyclopedia’s worth of advice on every agri-thing.) You can learn a lot on your own simply by spading around the yard and eyeballing your dirt. Chances are, it lacks organic matter and needs healthy helpings of aged manure, leaf mold, sawdust, straw, or store-bought compost. Dig it in at least as deep as a shovel head— or as much as your back muscles tolerate. Rule of Yard Work No. 1: The garden will bend to your abilities faster than your abilities will rise to its demands. 3. MOTHER NATURE KNOWS BEST Go on lots of hikes and study what you see. What kinds of plants bask in the sun? Which seek shelter in the shade? Do certain plants cluster around boulders? Mimic those cues in your yard and you’re one step closer to practicing permaculture—a type of ecological design that works with nature rather than against it. Good sources for purchasing native plants include Plants of the Southwest, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the Santa Ana Pueblo’s Native Plant Nursery. 4. BE A BUSY-BODY New Mexico’s micro-zones can outsmart your plans. Plants that thrive even a few miles away may wither in your yard. Visit the neighbors to see what they have blooming. Walk around the block. Take a garden tour. Ask everyone what they did right. And wrong. 5. GET SCHOOLED County Cooperative Extension Services throughout the state offer Master Gardener trainings every year, and often the graduates hold one-day workshops on topics like pruning or dealing with pests. Check them out online or give your county’s office a jingle. Besides Judith Phillips’ books, good titles include the Sunset Western Garden Book (Oxmoor House, 2007), the basic bible for general reference; Down to Earth: A Gardener’s Guide to the Albuquerque Area, by Albuquerque Master Gardeners; and Baker H. Morrow’s Best Plants for New Mexico Gardens and Landscapes (University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Morrow’s book separates the state into regions, a handy tool given the vast differences in altitude. High Country Gardens puts its years of wisdom online (highcountrygardens.com). 6. THE ESSENTIAL TOOLS In time, you may own a wheelbarrow, chain saw, post-hole digger, pitchfork, hoe, edger, three kinds of pruners, various spades, and more. Until then, keep it simple. You can’t do a thing without a pair of gloves and a big strong shovel. If your soil contains clay or caliche, invest in a pickax. A heavy bow rake moves soil; a leaf rake sweeps the top clean. For hand tools, a trowel and pruners will go a long way. Add a bottle of ibuprofen to soothe the muscles all that work strains. 7. CONSIDER CONTAINERS I’ve grown tomatoes, kale, herbs, fennel, and chile in patio pots. Santa Fe–based Grow Y’Own sells raised garden beds with hooped tops for creating year-round mini-greenhouses. The aluminum watering troughs sold at feed stores make cool pots with a sleek-but-stillcountry style. Containers offer complete control over soil, are easy to water, eliminate stoop labor, and dissuade rabbits. Drainage can be a problem, so make sure the bottom of whatever you use has holes. The deeper the container, the more soil you’ll need. Consider starting with a layer of rocks. The oft-trumpeted Styrofoam-peanut layer sounds like lightweight fun until you need to tend the soil. Rule of Yard Work No. 2: In a yard or a container, you will need to tend the soil for the rest of your garden’s life. 8. TOP IT OFF Desert sun and spring winds strip moisture from that modified soil. A layer of mulch slows down evaporation and suppresses weeds. A few inches of organic material, rocks, tumbled glass, or even shredded rubber will work. Organic choices include pine needles, bark, pecan shells, leaves, straw, and grass clippings. Once they decompose, you can work them into the soil. Check to see if your local landfill composts green waste and offers it for sale by the truckload. 9. A THIRST THAT KILLS Even if you amend the soil and pick perfect plants, rainfall alone won’t suffice. Forget sprinklers—they’re best at watering the air. Drip irrigation is the gold standard for New Mexico. Give it a helping hand when planting trees or shrubs by creating an earthen moat to hold a puddle of water. Rainwater zooms off any hard surface. Capture roof runoff in rain barrels (Tijeras Rain Barrels sells them in a variety of cheery colors and finishes), or terrace your yard so that each tier slows down the streams. Permaculturists use pumice wicks, gabions, swales, and other water tricks. Read Harvest the Rain: How to Enrich Your Life by Seeing Every Storm as a Resource, by Santa Fe’s Nate Downey (Sunstone Press, 2010), or visit sfpermaculture.com . (And see our April 2013 article “The Lush Life,” mynm.us/downey13 .) 10. REALITY BITES Rule of Yard Work No. 3: Things go wrong. Temperatures soar, hail falls, rabbits nibble, and the lowly bark beetle lays waste to entire forests. Why bother? Like a lot of things in life, gardening is more about the process than the goal. Learn some science. Play with design principles. Spend hours outdoors working your mind, body, and spirit as you till the soil and baby the tender sprouts. Wrap your heart around the act of gardening and the actual garden will follow, beautiful and imperfect, together as one. Kate Nelson lives and gardens in Placitas.","id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f99a","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/nm-living-july-2014-87077/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/nm-living-july-2014-87077/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/nm-living-july-2014-87077/","metaTitle":"How to: Lush gardens in an arid landscape","metaDescription":"The landscape of New Mexico and the greater southwest is treasured for its sparseness, but foliage loving gardeners may be disappointed by the lack of water. Don't fret, there are several ways to work around the dry heat with low-water and hardy plants.","cleanDescription":"FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green, pine green, cholla green, and more shades appear. Put a spade into soil, add some compost, sprinkle with water, and you might even coax red, yellow, pink, and purple from trees, shrubs, vegetables, flowers, and succulents. Desert gardens provide challenges only worsened by our ongoing regional drought. But this isn’t Death Valley—it’s still the Land of Enchantment. Here are a few first steps to invite beauty into your yard. 1. XERISCAPE, DON’T ZERO-SCAPE Born in 1981, the word xeriscape defines a type of low-water-use landscaping (xeros means dry in Greek). As it gained popularity, a few folks went overboard, coating their yards in nomaintenance gravel. Rocks play an important role in defining your yard, minimizing weeds, and making a star out of the plants you fall in love with, but they shouldn’t steal the show. Xeriscape appeals to minimalists. Done right, its spare number of well-chosen species thrive on mere sips of water. One of the best practitioners of the art is Albuquerque-based landscape designer Judith Phillips ( judithphillipsdesignoasis.com ). She’s written four books with tips on mapping out designs, choosing water-wise plants, and tending them. My favorites: Southwestern Landscaping with Native Plants (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987) and New Mexico Gardener’s Guide (Cool Springs Press, 2005). 2. HERE’S THE DIRT Unless you’re lucky enough to live on an old floodplain, your soil has too much sand, too much clay, or too much caliche. For certain, the pH level is too alkaline; most plants seem to adore higher acid levels. To ascertain your soil’s profile and how it should be amended, collect a sample using a soil kit provided by your county’s Cooperative Extension Service, then mail it to their recommended lab at Colorado State University. Find its address, among others, at mynm.us/soillabs. (You’ll also want to bookmark aces.nmsu.edu/ aes/labs.html. This site contains an encyclopedia’s worth of advice on every agri-thing.) You can learn a lot on your own simply by spading around the yard and eyeballing your dirt. Chances are, it lacks organic matter and needs healthy helpings of aged manure, leaf mold, sawdust, straw, or store-bought compost. Dig it in at least as deep as a shovel head— or as much as your back muscles tolerate. Rule of Yard Work No. 1: The garden will bend to your abilities faster than your abilities will rise to its demands. 3. MOTHER NATURE KNOWS BEST Go on lots of hikes and study what you see. What kinds of plants bask in the sun? Which seek shelter in the shade? Do certain plants cluster around boulders? Mimic those cues in your yard and you’re one step closer to practicing permaculture—a type of ecological design that works with nature rather than against it. Good sources for purchasing native plants include Plants of the Southwest, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the Santa Ana Pueblo’s Native Plant Nursery. 4. BE A BUSY-BODY New Mexico’s micro-zones can outsmart your plans. Plants that thrive even a few miles away may wither in your yard. Visit the neighbors to see what they have blooming. Walk around the block. Take a garden tour. Ask everyone what they did right. And wrong. 5. GET SCHOOLED County Cooperative Extension Services throughout the state offer Master Gardener trainings every year, and often the graduates hold one-day workshops on topics like pruning or dealing with pests. Check them out online or give your county’s office a jingle. Besides Judith Phillips’ books, good titles include the Sunset Western Garden Book (Oxmoor House, 2007), the basic bible for general reference; Down to Earth: A Gardener’s Guide to the Albuquerque Area, by Albuquerque Master Gardeners; and Baker H. Morrow’s Best Plants for New Mexico Gardens and Landscapes (University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Morrow’s book separates the state into regions, a handy tool given the vast differences in altitude. High Country Gardens puts its years of wisdom online (highcountrygardens.com). 6. THE ESSENTIAL TOOLS In time, you may own a wheelbarrow, chain saw, post-hole digger, pitchfork, hoe, edger, three kinds of pruners, various spades, and more. Until then, keep it simple. You can’t do a thing without a pair of gloves and a big strong shovel. If your soil contains clay or caliche, invest in a pickax. A heavy bow rake moves soil; a leaf rake sweeps the top clean. For hand tools, a trowel and pruners will go a long way. Add a bottle of ibuprofen to soothe the muscles all that work strains. 7. CONSIDER CONTAINERS I’ve grown tomatoes, kale, herbs, fennel, and chile in patio pots. Santa Fe–based Grow Y’Own sells raised garden beds with hooped tops for creating year-round mini-greenhouses. The aluminum watering troughs sold at feed stores make cool pots with a sleek-but-stillcountry style. Containers offer complete control over soil, are easy to water, eliminate stoop labor, and dissuade rabbits. Drainage can be a problem, so make sure the bottom of whatever you use has holes. The deeper the container, the more soil you’ll need. Consider starting with a layer of rocks. The oft-trumpeted Styrofoam-peanut layer sounds like lightweight fun until you need to tend the soil. Rule of Yard Work No. 2: In a yard or a container, you will need to tend the soil for the rest of your garden’s life. 8. TOP IT OFF Desert sun and spring winds strip moisture from that modified soil. A layer of mulch slows down evaporation and suppresses weeds. A few inches of organic material, rocks, tumbled glass, or even shredded rubber will work. Organic choices include pine needles, bark, pecan shells, leaves, straw, and grass clippings. Once they decompose, you can work them into the soil. Check to see if your local landfill composts green waste and offers it for sale by the truckload. 9. A THIRST THAT KILLS Even if you amend the soil and pick perfect plants, rainfall alone won’t suffice. Forget sprinklers—they’re best at watering the air. Drip irrigation is the gold standard for New Mexico. Give it a helping hand when planting trees or shrubs by creating an earthen moat to hold a puddle of water. Rainwater zooms off any hard surface. Capture roof runoff in rain barrels (Tijeras Rain Barrels sells them in a variety of cheery colors and finishes), or terrace your yard so that each tier slows down the streams. Permaculturists use pumice wicks, gabions, swales, and other water tricks. Read Harvest the Rain: How to Enrich Your Life by Seeing Every Storm as a Resource, by Santa Fe’s Nate Downey (Sunstone Press, 2010), or visit sfpermaculture.com . (And see our April 2013 article “The Lush Life,” mynm.us/downey13 .) 10. REALITY BITES Rule of Yard Work No. 3: Things go wrong. Temperatures soar, hail falls, rabbits nibble, and the lowly bark beetle lays waste to entire forests. Why bother? Like a lot of things in life, gardening is more about the process than the goal. Learn some science. Play with design principles. Spend hours outdoors working your mind, body, and spirit as you till the soil and baby the tender sprouts. Wrap your heart around the act of gardening and the actual garden will follow, beautiful and imperfect, together as one. Kate Nelson lives and gardens in Placitas.","publish_start_moment":"2014-07-09T11:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.928Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f999","title":"One of Our 50 Is Missing","slug":"one-of-our-fifty-is-missing-87076","publish_start":"2014-07-08T17:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc","58b4b2404c2774661570f30b","58b4b2404c2774661570f267"],"tags_ids":["59090d23e1efff4c9916fa71","59090de2e1efff4c9916fafb","59090c10e1efff4c9916f95a"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_tagline":"Rueful anecdotes about New Mexico's mistaken geographical identity, since 1970.","created":"2014-07-08T17:00:01.000Z","legacy_id":"87076","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"one of our 50 is missing","updated":"2017-10-31T21:31:32.853Z","active":true,"description_raw":"

Send Us Your Story—Please! \r\n\r\nDear “50” fans: Help sustain this popular feature by sharing anecdotes that you haven’t gotten around to sending in. Just dash it off if you like, and we’ll take it from there. Submissions will be edited for style and space.\r\n\r\nPlease include your name, hometown, and state. E-mail to fifty@ nmmagazine.com, or mail to Fifty, New Mexico Magazine, 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501.

\r\n\r\n

FALSE CHARGE\r\nAfter Jack Arnold moved from Manhattan to Rio Rancho, he called his bank in New York to transfer some money to his New Mexico account. “The banker told me that the transfer was going to cost me $25. I asked him why, since there was no charge for transfers between banks.” The teller explained that there was a charge for foreign transfers. With true New York chutzpah, Arnold says, “I told him to brush up on his geography and send the money at no charge, as New Mexico is part of the United States!”

\r\n\r\n

MEET THE NEIGHBORS\r\nGary Thornhill, who has a winter home in Las Cruces, recently attended a meeting at his company’s San Antonio, Texas, office. As Thornhill told a colleague that he worked out of his home, he was interrupted by the San Antonio office’s company manager. “He said that he didn’t think that [working from Las Cruces] could be done because of the need for international calls and Internet connections to the United States.” Thornhill indicated that international calls are not necessary and that Internet connectivity is available in Las Cruces. “I was quite surprised by the manager’s remark, since San Antonio is so close to Las Cruces, not to mention that our company headquarters is in Albuquerque.”

\r\n\r\n

DEBIT CARD FRAUD\r\nMonte Thompson of Aledo, Texas, was unpleasantly surprised when his debit card was declined as he attempted to check out of his lodgings in Abiquiú. “I asked the manager to run it again, knowing that I had plenty of funds in my bank account.” The card also did not work for the following two days as he drove back to Texas. Once back in the Lone Star State, Thompson went to the bank to get to the bottom of the matter. “The manager looked at my account and the attempted debits in New Mexico, and then told me that for my security, they had placed a hold on my funds while I was in Mexico.” Thompson told her that he had been in Santa Fe, and other towns near there, and asked if she had ever heard of Santa Fe, which is in New Mexico. “She said that she had heard of Santa Fe and hoped that I had had a nice trip. She told me that the next time I went that I should call the manager to let her know that I would be using my card in a foreign country.”

\r\n\r\n

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?\r\nJudy Eckhart was on a live chat with a major cell phone provider, trying to straighten out a problem with her phone. Twice the customer service representative asked for verification of her address. Each time, she gave the rep her street address in Santa Fe. Rep: Do you have access on your phone while you are in Mexico? Eckhart: I am not in Mexico. I am in the state of New Mexico. Rep: Oh, okay. Sorry for the confusion. Power the phone off and back on.

\r\n\r\n

FOUL-WEATHER FRIENDS \r\nAs Carlson Simmons prepared to move to New Mexico from western New York, several friends asked why he would ever want to move to another country. “I hastened to explain that New Mexico was, indeed, part of the United States.” But why, he was asked, would he ever want to leave the Buffalo area? Rather than enumerate the advantages (starting with the weather), Simmons smiled and moved on. “I have settled in, and every morning when I go out to get the paper, I look up at the Sandías, and get a warm, happy feeling.”

\r\n\r\n

CHEESED OFF \r\nAfter a satisfying meal at the Melting Pot in Albuquerque, Judy Belvin joined the restaurant’s Club Fondue. She subsequently received an e-mail from the Melting Pot inviting her to come to the restaurant for free cheese fondue as part of the celebration of National Cheese Fondue Day. The next day, however, she got an apologetic e-mail from the Melting Pot stating that the offer applied only to those living in the United States. “I wrote to them,” Belvin reports, “and said that I was amazed that they have a restaurant in uptown Albuquerque, and yet they don’t know that New Mexico is in the United States. I have not received a reply from them.”

\r\n\r\n

NO POSOLE \r\nWhile playing Words with Friends (an online Scrabble game), Diane Botham Jones had a “pretty ugly hand,” but she brightened up when she saw that she could play the word “posole.” She received the following message: She continued, “In the past, I found out that ‘zia’ is not an acceptable word, either. Better change the state flag!”

","teaser_raw":"

Send Us Your Story—Please!

Dear “50” fans: Help sustain this popular feature by sharing anecdotes that you haven’t gotten around to sending in. Just dash it off if you like, and we’ll take it from

","version_id":"59f8ebb4648901d6cd725f2c","categories":[{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc","blog":"magazine","title":"July 2014","_title_sort":"july 2014","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.560Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.567Z","_totalPosts":15,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc","slug":"july-2014","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/july-2014/58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/july-2014/58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc/#comments","totalPosts":15},{"_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f30b","blog":"magazine","title":"One Of Our 50 Is Missing","_title_sort":"one of our 50 is missing","updated":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.592Z","created":"2017-02-27T23:12:00.600Z","_totalPosts":82,"id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f30b","slug":"one-of-our-50-is-missing","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/one-of-our-50-is-missing/58b4b2404c2774661570f30b/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/category/one-of-our-50-is-missing/58b4b2404c2774661570f30b/#comments","totalPosts":82}],"teaser":"

Send Us Your Story—Please!

Dear “50” fans: Help sustain this popular feature by sharing anecdotes that you haven’t gotten around to sending in. Just dash it off if you like, and we’ll take it from

","description":"Send Us Your Story—Please! Dear “50” fans: Help sustain this popular feature by sharing anecdotes that you haven’t gotten around to sending in. Just dash it off if you like, and we’ll take it from there. Submissions will be edited for style and space. Please include your name, hometown, and state. E-mail to fifty@ nmmagazine.com , or mail to Fifty, New Mexico Magazine, 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501. FALSE CHARGE After Jack Arnold moved from Manhattan to Rio Rancho, he called his bank in New York to transfer some money to his New Mexico account. “The banker told me that the transfer was going to cost me $25. I asked him why, since there was no charge for transfers between banks.” The teller explained that there was a charge for foreign transfers. With true New York chutzpah, Arnold says, “I told him to brush up on his geography and send the money at no charge, as New Mexico is part of the United States!” MEET THE NEIGHBORS Gary Thornhill, who has a winter home in Las Cruces, recently attended a meeting at his company’s San Antonio, Texas, office. As Thornhill told a colleague that he worked out of his home, he was interrupted by the San Antonio office’s company manager. “He said that he didn’t think that [working from Las Cruces] could be done because of the need for international calls and Internet connections to the United States.” Thornhill indicated that international calls are not necessary and that Internet connectivity is available in Las Cruces. “I was quite surprised by the manager’s remark, since San Antonio is so close to Las Cruces, not to mention that our company headquarters is in Albuquerque.” DEBIT CARD FRAUD Monte Thompson of Aledo, Texas, was unpleasantly surprised when his debit card was declined as he attempted to check out of his lodgings in Abiquiú. “I asked the manager to run it again, knowing that I had plenty of funds in my bank account.” The card also did not work for the following two days as he drove back to Texas. Once back in the Lone Star State, Thompson went to the bank to get to the bottom of the matter. “The manager looked at my account and the attempted debits in New Mexico, and then told me that for my security, they had placed a hold on my funds while I was in Mexico.” Thompson told her that he had been in Santa Fe, and other towns near there, and asked if she had ever heard of Santa Fe, which is in New Mexico. “She said that she had heard of Santa Fe and hoped that I had had a nice trip. She told me that the next time I went that I should call the manager to let her know that I would be using my card in a foreign country.” CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? Judy Eckhart was on a live chat with a major cell phone provider, trying to straighten out a problem with her phone. Twice the customer service representative asked for verification of her address. Each time, she gave the rep her street address in Santa Fe. Rep: Do you have access on your phone while you are in Mexico? Eckhart: I am not in Mexico. I am in the state of New Mexico. Rep: Oh, okay. Sorry for the confusion. Power the phone off and back on. FOUL-WEATHER FRIENDS As Carlson Simmons prepared to move to New Mexico from western New York, several friends asked why he would ever want to move to another country. “I hastened to explain that New Mexico was, indeed, part of the United States.” But why, he was asked, would he ever want to leave the Buffalo area? Rather than enumerate the advantages (starting with the weather), Simmons smiled and moved on. “I have settled in, and every morning when I go out to get the paper, I look up at the Sandías, and get a warm, happy feeling.” CHEESED OFF After a satisfying meal at the Melting Pot in Albuquerque, Judy Belvin joined the restaurant’s Club Fondue. She subsequently received an e-mail from the Melting Pot inviting her to come to the restaurant for free cheese fondue as part of the celebration of National Cheese Fondue Day. The next day, however, she got an apologetic e-mail from the Melting Pot stating that the offer applied only to those living in the United States. “I wrote to them,” Belvin reports, “and said that I was amazed that they have a restaurant in uptown Albuquerque, and yet they don’t know that New Mexico is in the United States. I have not received a reply from them.” NO POSOLE While playing Words with Friends (an online Scrabble game), Diane Botham Jones had a “pretty ugly hand,” but she brightened up when she saw that she could play the word “posole.” She received the following message: She continued, “In the past, I found out that ‘zia’ is not an acceptable word, either. Better change the state flag!”","id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f999","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-our-fifty-is-missing-87076/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-our-fifty-is-missing-87076/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-our-fifty-is-missing-87076/","metaTitle":"One of Our 50 Is Missing","metaDescription":"

Send Us Your Story—Please!

Dear “50” fans: Help sustain this popular feature by sharing anecdotes that you haven’t gotten around to sending in. Just dash it off if you like, and we’ll take it from

","cleanDescription":"Send Us Your Story—Please! Dear “50” fans: Help sustain this popular feature by sharing anecdotes that you haven’t gotten around to sending in. Just dash it off if you like, and we’ll take it from there. Submissions will be edited for style and space. Please include your name, hometown, and state. E-mail to fifty@ nmmagazine.com , or mail to Fifty, New Mexico Magazine, 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501. FALSE CHARGE After Jack Arnold moved from Manhattan to Rio Rancho, he called his bank in New York to transfer some money to his New Mexico account. “The banker told me that the transfer was going to cost me $25. I asked him why, since there was no charge for transfers between banks.” The teller explained that there was a charge for foreign transfers. With true New York chutzpah, Arnold says, “I told him to brush up on his geography and send the money at no charge, as New Mexico is part of the United States!” MEET THE NEIGHBORS Gary Thornhill, who has a winter home in Las Cruces, recently attended a meeting at his company’s San Antonio, Texas, office. As Thornhill told a colleague that he worked out of his home, he was interrupted by the San Antonio office’s company manager. “He said that he didn’t think that [working from Las Cruces] could be done because of the need for international calls and Internet connections to the United States.” Thornhill indicated that international calls are not necessary and that Internet connectivity is available in Las Cruces. “I was quite surprised by the manager’s remark, since San Antonio is so close to Las Cruces, not to mention that our company headquarters is in Albuquerque.” DEBIT CARD FRAUD Monte Thompson of Aledo, Texas, was unpleasantly surprised when his debit card was declined as he attempted to check out of his lodgings in Abiquiú. “I asked the manager to run it again, knowing that I had plenty of funds in my bank account.” The card also did not work for the following two days as he drove back to Texas. Once back in the Lone Star State, Thompson went to the bank to get to the bottom of the matter. “The manager looked at my account and the attempted debits in New Mexico, and then told me that for my security, they had placed a hold on my funds while I was in Mexico.” Thompson told her that he had been in Santa Fe, and other towns near there, and asked if she had ever heard of Santa Fe, which is in New Mexico. “She said that she had heard of Santa Fe and hoped that I had had a nice trip. She told me that the next time I went that I should call the manager to let her know that I would be using my card in a foreign country.” CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? Judy Eckhart was on a live chat with a major cell phone provider, trying to straighten out a problem with her phone. Twice the customer service representative asked for verification of her address. Each time, she gave the rep her street address in Santa Fe. Rep: Do you have access on your phone while you are in Mexico? Eckhart: I am not in Mexico. I am in the state of New Mexico. Rep: Oh, okay. Sorry for the confusion. Power the phone off and back on. FOUL-WEATHER FRIENDS As Carlson Simmons prepared to move to New Mexico from western New York, several friends asked why he would ever want to move to another country. “I hastened to explain that New Mexico was, indeed, part of the United States.” But why, he was asked, would he ever want to leave the Buffalo area? Rather than enumerate the advantages (starting with the weather), Simmons smiled and moved on. “I have settled in, and every morning when I go out to get the paper, I look up at the Sandías, and get a warm, happy feeling.” CHEESED OFF After a satisfying meal at the Melting Pot in Albuquerque, Judy Belvin joined the restaurant’s Club Fondue. She subsequently received an e-mail from the Melting Pot inviting her to come to the restaurant for free cheese fondue as part of the celebration of National Cheese Fondue Day. The next day, however, she got an apologetic e-mail from the Melting Pot stating that the offer applied only to those living in the United States. “I wrote to them,” Belvin reports, “and said that I was amazed that they have a restaurant in uptown Albuquerque, and yet they don’t know that New Mexico is in the United States. I have not received a reply from them.” NO POSOLE While playing Words with Friends (an online Scrabble game), Diane Botham Jones had a “pretty ugly hand,” but she brightened up when she saw that she could play the word “posole.” She received the following message: She continued, “In the past, I found out that ‘zia’ is not an acceptable word, either. Better change the state flag!”","publish_start_moment":"2014-07-08T17:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.928Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f995","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1af","title":"Learning the Ropes","slug":"learning-the-ropes-86935","image_id":"58b4b2494c2774661570f4f5","meta_title":"Learning the ropes - Don't wear lipstick to the rodeo","meta_description":"One New-to-New-Mexico woman's experience with the rodeo, the good, the bad and the lip-smacking dirty.","open_graph_title":"Don't Wear Lipstick to the Rodeo","open_graph_description":"Christine Barber fell in love with rodeo in and around Gallup … one faux pas at a time.","publish_start":"2014-06-25T16:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c83bb81f16f9392cf09b52","58b4b2404c2774661570f2a3","58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_photo_credit":"Will Seberger","custom_tagline":"CHRISTINE BARBER fell in love with rodeo in and around Gallup … one faux pas at a time.","created":"2014-06-25T16:06:47.000Z","legacy_id":"86935","version_id":"59f8ebb4648901d6cd725f42","description_raw":"

NEED TO KNOW\r\nJULY RODEOS AND ROPING/RIDING EVENTS\r\nWe recommend that you contact the individual rodeo associations or event promoters/hosts for the most up-to-date schedule and information.\r\n\r\nJuly 1\r\nMescalero Apache Powwow, Pro and Open Indian Rodeos, and Coming-of-Age Ceremony Amateur and pro competitors. Mescalero Apache Reservation, near Ruidoso. (575) 671-4494\r\nJuly 4\r\nMaverick Club Rodeo The longest-running open rodeo in the West. Amateur and pro competitors. Maverick Club Arena, in Cimarrón. (575) 376-2417; cimarronnm.com\r\nJuly 4–5\r\nRabbit Ear Round-up Rodeo Union County Fairgrounds, in Clayton. (575) 374-9253; claytonnewmexico.org\r\nJuly 11–12\r\nWild Thing Bull-Riding Championship The toughest riders on the meanest bulls compete in the top open bull-riding event in the Southwest. Sanctioned by the Professional Bull Riders association. Red Rock Park Arena, in Gallup. (505) 722-2228; thegallupchamber.com\r\nJuly 18–20\r\nLittle Beaver Rodeo\r\nSanctioned by the All Indian Rodeo Cowboys Association and the Navajo Nation Rodeo Association, the event includes a powwow and carnival. Jicarilla Apache Reservation, in Dulce. (575) 759-3242; jicarillaonline.com\r\nJuly 25–27\r\nZia Regional Rodeo Sanctioned by the International Gay Rodeo Association, the rodeo is the second-largest LGBTQ event in the state. Rodeo de Santa Fe, in Santa Fe. (505) 833-1666; nmgra.org\r\nJuly 27\r\nHarding County Ranch Rodeo This event hosts both men’s and women’s competitions, and is sanctioned by the Ranch Cowgirls Rodeo Association. Roy Events Center, in Roy. ranchcowgirlsrodeoassociation. com

\r\n\r\n

The first rule of watching rodeo: Don’t wear lip gloss. I learned this in 1994 at my very first rodeo in Gallup. My friends and I found our seats on the hot aluminum bleachers and munched on Indian fry bread while, in the middle of the rodeo ground a few feet away, a barrel racer riding a mustang made cloverleaf patterns around oil drums. At each tight turn, the mustang kicked up a puff of dust, which swirled up so the wind could catch it and throw it right in our faces. The lip gloss became like amber to ancient mosquitoes—it held the crystals of dust in a solid grip, encasing them for eternity. My lips actually made a crunching sound when I squeezed them together to free the sand.

\r\n\r\n

A month before, I’d moved to New Mexico from Florida to work at the Gallup Independent newspaper. My new home was an old double-wide trailer on the Navajo reservation just outside of town. During my commute to work, I saw cliffs of red rocks a half mile to the north, low hills covered in pine trees to the south, and absolutely nothing but horizon to the west and east. It was so unlike Florida’s Disney-esque version of life, where anything rough-edged or disobedient had to be paved over and made into a strip mall.

\r\n\r\n

I think that’s why, during the two years I lived in Gallup, I went to any rodeo I could in places like Farmington, Shiprock, Two Grey Hills, and Crownpoint. Everything about rodeo was rough-edged and disobedient. Not the least of which was the dust that turned my lip gloss into sandpaper that first day.

\r\n\r\n

The bulk of what I knew about rodeo came from countrywestern songs, so all I could tell you was that blood rhymed with mud, and latigo (whatever that was) didn’t rhyme with anything. I would try to listen as the announcers gave play-by-plays, but—as in the announcements to shoppers at the local Wal-Mart—the important information was said in Navajo. All I could say for sure was that cowboys with the last names Yazzie and Begay got the longest applause.

\r\n\r\n

If the rodeo was part of a county fair, it was easy to get distracted, because inevitably a powwow would be going on at the same time. Even if I didn’t have a clear view of the dancing area, I could faintly hear the beat of drums and almost see the intricate steps of the dancers, the ribbons of their costumes flowing like waves of color around them. I got good at spotting the powwow-rodeo moms who had sons in both competitions. The mother would perch on the highest bleacher seat above the rodeo grounds, keeping an eye on one son as he held tight to the back of a bronco and another eye on her other son as he did complicated dance steps at the powwow grounds next door.

\r\n\r\n

One day, heavy summer monsoon rains cut an arroyo through the dancing grounds, and the powwow was postponed. I paid more attention to the bulls and the blood, the dust and the mud. I still had no idea what was going on. Luckily, rodeo people are friendly, so everyone around me explained the finer points. For instance, real cowboys wear Wrangler jeans. The reason for this is historical. Wranglers were first made in the 1940s specifically for cowboys. The jeans featured back pockets that wouldn’t chafe while in the saddle, and the metal rivet in the crotch was replaced by a strong zigzag stitch, which sounds like a much-needed improvement. Wranglers are the official jeans of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which also has official hay distributors and official trailer hitches.

\r\n\r\n

The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association also has official cowboy boots—Justin Boots, in business since 1879. When I decided to get a pair so that I could look like I belonged at a rodeo, I went to Zimmerman’s Western Wear on Route 66 in the middle of Gallup, next to Richardson’s Trading Post. More than 50 years ago, when Bob Dylan—aka Robert Zimmerman, from small-town Minnesota—wanted to create a cool persona, he said he was a Zimmerman from Gallup. I tried to play it as cool as Dylan as I went into the store, but I quickly got a turquoise-blue boot trapped halfway up my left foot. It would be hard for anyone to look cool hobbling like Quasimodo across the store, looking for help with a blue boot dragging behind one foot and a sweat sock with a hole in the big toe on the other. I walked out of Zimmerman’s with sensible black roper boots. I’ve had those boots resoled twice and still wear them when I want to feel tough.

\r\n\r\n

Full of pride after buying my first pair of cowboy boots, I wore them to the very next rodeo in Shiprock, where the friendly folks around me explained the various types of rodeo competitions, including timed events such as barrel racing and roping, and roughstock events such as bull riding and bronco busting. In pro rodeos, women can compete only in barrel racing. (In amateur rodeos, they can also compete in roping categories.) Back in the 1920s, women rode bulls along with the boys, but after two women died while riding, the men became nervous and banned women from the rough-stock events. There are no statistics on how many men died doing the exact same thing.

\r\n\r\n

It is during the team and individual roping events that the stereotypical lasso comes out. In the individual event, a rider must throw the rope around the neck of a calf. The horse then leans back to pull tension on the rope. The cowboy jumps down, grabs the calf, and lays it down. Then, in some sleight-of-hand trick, he ties three of the calf’s hooves together in one fluid motion. The second he is done, the cowboy throws his arms up in the air to show he is finished—a combination of a magician’s “Ta-da!” and a gymnast’s “finish” position. It is the ultimate sign of confidence and completion. I started making that gesture in the newsroom when I would finish a story at deadline. I would type in the last period and throw my arms into the air, like I had just hog-tied a baby cow.

\r\n\r\n

After working in Gallup for two years, I moved to Santa Fe to work for the New Mexican newspaper. One of my first writing assignments was an article on road construction. Without thinking, as I typed in the final period, I threw my hands in the air. Most of the newsroom ignored me. But one woman, in jeans and cowboy boots, walked over to me and introduced herself, saying, “I can tell you’ve been to a rodeo or two.” She had grown up in Window Rock, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation, and found herself fighting the urge to do the same thing when she finished a story.

\r\n\r\n

It was she who told me about how a bull becomes part of the rodeo circuit. The bulls, along with the bucking horses, are trained to buck, and the best buckers are treated like royalty. One of the biggest names in bulls is Bushwacker, who has a Clint Eastwood stare and spots on his face that make him look diseased. He has been successfully ridden only twice since 2009. He bucks off 96 percent of cowboys in 3.3 seconds, leaving them far short of the required 8-second ride. Because bulls like Bushwacker are so prized, they are pampered and specially bred to work in rodeo. They are often given names designed to scare the cowboy—Fear Me, Bucking Machine, or Pain Maker—or scare the bull—Meat Hook or Crack the Whip. The cowboy who is able to ride for the full 8 seconds might go on to win the most prized trophy: a really, really enormous belt buckle.

\r\n\r\n

It was before moving to Santa Fe, when I was still making the rodeo rounds near Gallup, that I learned another rodeo rule the hard way: Never ask a woman if she is a “buckle bunny.” I had been told that you could tell a bunny by her denim shorts, small shirt, cowboy boots, and dedication to meeting the rodeo rider who has won the biggest buckle. I thought the perfect way to meet one was to write a story about bunnies. But I went to rodeo after rodeo and never saw one. It was late summer, and, with the rodeo season winding down, I was worried I’d never get an interview.

\r\n\r\n

I was at a rodeo in Grants when I finally spotted one through the crowd. She wasn’t wearing denim shorts, but instead had on a long purple skirt with a hem that reached down to the dirt, leaving only the tips of her boots visible. It was her blouse that made me suspect she was a bunny. It was very sheer; you could see everything underneath in the bright sunlight. Her bottom half was A Prairie Home Companion and her top half was exotic dancer.

\r\n\r\n

I pursued her past the cow-plop field, where people were betting on the exact spot a cow would defecate, and the mutton-busting ring, where toddlers in cowboy hats held tight to the backs of fluffy sheep. I finally caught up with her outside the burrito truck, where she was chatting with a bull rider still wearing his leather chaps. I introduced myself as a reporter and told her about the story I was working on.

\r\n\r\n

In hindsight, I probably should have thought it through. Let’s just say that you should never suggest that a woman might be out to find the man with the biggest buckle.

\r\n\r\n

I live in Albuquerque now, and the rodeos that come to town are held in indoor stadiums with artificial lighting. There is little chance any dust will get stuck in my lip gloss. That might be why I haven’t been to a rodeo in years; inside, a sense of wildness seems to be missing. But maybe the next time I drive past a hand-painted sign for a local rodeo as I go through Gallup or Grants or Cuba or Crownpoint, I might just stop for some Indian fry bread and sit for a moment on hot bleacher seats. I’ll wait for the wind to blow some dust in my face and see if I can spot a bull with a Clint Eastwood stare.

\r\n\r\n

And maybe I’ll finally find out what a latigo is.

","teaser_raw":"

NEED TO KNOW JULY RODEOS AND ROPING/RIDING EVENTS We recommend that you contact the individual rodeo associations or event promoters/hosts for the most up-to-date schedule and information.

NEED TO KNOW JULY RODEOS AND ROPING/RIDING EVENTS We recommend that you contact the individual rodeo associations or event promoters/hosts for the most up-to-date schedule and information.

July 1

","description":"NEED TO KNOW JULY RODEOS AND ROPING/RIDING EVENTS We recommend that you contact the individual rodeo associations or event promoters/hosts for the most up-to-date schedule and information. July 1 Mescalero Apache Powwow, Pro and Open Indian Rodeos, and Coming-of-Age Ceremony Amateur and pro competitors. Mescalero Apache Reservation, near Ruidoso. (575) 671-4494 July 4 Maverick Club Rodeo The longest-running open rodeo in the West. Amateur and pro competitors. Maverick Club Arena, in Cimarrón. (575) 376-2417; cimarronnm.com July 4–5 Rabbit Ear Round-up Rodeo Union County Fairgrounds, in Clayton. (575) 374-9253; claytonnewmexico.org July 11–12 Wild Thing Bull-Riding Championship The toughest riders on the meanest bulls compete in the top open bull-riding event in the Southwest. Sanctioned by the Professional Bull Riders association. Red Rock Park Arena, in Gallup. (505) 722-2228; thegallupchamber.com July 18–20 Little Beaver Rodeo Sanctioned by the All Indian Rodeo Cowboys Association and the Navajo Nation Rodeo Association, the event includes a powwow and carnival. Jicarilla Apache Reservation, in Dulce. (575) 759-3242; jicarillaonline.com July 25–27 Zia Regional Rodeo Sanctioned by the International Gay Rodeo Association, the rodeo is the second-largest LGBTQ event in the state. Rodeo de Santa Fe, in Santa Fe. (505) 833-1666; nmgra.org July 27 Harding County Ranch Rodeo This event hosts both men’s and women’s competitions, and is sanctioned by the Ranch Cowgirls Rodeo Association. Roy Events Center, in Roy. ranchcowgirlsrodeoassociation. com The first rule of watching rodeo: Don’t wear lip gloss. I learned this in 1994 at my very first rodeo in Gallup. My friends and I found our seats on the hot aluminum bleachers and munched on Indian fry bread while, in the middle of the rodeo ground a few feet away, a barrel racer riding a mustang made cloverleaf patterns around oil drums. At each tight turn, the mustang kicked up a puff of dust, which swirled up so the wind could catch it and throw it right in our faces. The lip gloss became like amber to ancient mosquitoes—it held the crystals of dust in a solid grip, encasing them for eternity. My lips actually made a crunching sound when I squeezed them together to free the sand. A month before, I’d moved to New Mexico from Florida to work at the Gallup Independent newspaper. My new home was an old double-wide trailer on the Navajo reservation just outside of town. During my commute to work, I saw cliffs of red rocks a half mile to the north, low hills covered in pine trees to the south, and absolutely nothing but horizon to the west and east. It was so unlike Florida’s Disney-esque version of life, where anything rough-edged or disobedient had to be paved over and made into a strip mall. I think that’s why, during the two years I lived in Gallup, I went to any rodeo I could in places like Farmington, Shiprock, Two Grey Hills, and Crownpoint. Everything about rodeo was rough-edged and disobedient. Not the least of which was the dust that turned my lip gloss into sandpaper that first day. The bulk of what I knew about rodeo came from countrywestern songs, so all I could tell you was that blood rhymed with mud , and latigo (whatever that was) didn’t rhyme with anything. I would try to listen as the announcers gave play-by-plays, but—as in the announcements to shoppers at the local Wal-Mart—the important information was said in Navajo. All I could say for sure was that cowboys with the last names Yazzie and Begay got the longest applause. If the rodeo was part of a county fair, it was easy to get distracted, because inevitably a powwow would be going on at the same time. Even if I didn’t have a clear view of the dancing area, I could faintly hear the beat of drums and almost see the intricate steps of the dancers, the ribbons of their costumes flowing like waves of color around them. I got good at spotting the powwow-rodeo moms who had sons in both competitions. The mother would perch on the highest bleacher seat above the rodeo grounds, keeping an eye on one son as he held tight to the back of a bronco and another eye on her other son as he did complicated dance steps at the powwow grounds next door. One day, heavy summer monsoon rains cut an arroyo through the dancing grounds, and the powwow was postponed. I paid more attention to the bulls and the blood, the dust and the mud. I still had no idea what was going on. Luckily, rodeo people are friendly, so everyone around me explained the finer points. For instance, real cowboys wear Wrangler jeans. The reason for this is historical. Wranglers were first made in the 1940s specifically for cowboys. The jeans featured back pockets that wouldn’t chafe while in the saddle, and the metal rivet in the crotch was replaced by a strong zigzag stitch, which sounds like a much-needed improvement. Wranglers are the official jeans of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which also has official hay distributors and official trailer hitches. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association also has official cowboy boots—Justin Boots, in business since 1879. When I decided to get a pair so that I could look like I belonged at a rodeo, I went to Zimmerman’s Western Wear on Route 66 in the middle of Gallup, next to Richardson’s Trading Post. More than 50 years ago, when Bob Dylan—aka Robert Zimmerman, from small-town Minnesota—wanted to create a cool persona, he said he was a Zimmerman from Gallup. I tried to play it as cool as Dylan as I went into the store, but I quickly got a turquoise-blue boot trapped halfway up my left foot. It would be hard for anyone to look cool hobbling like Quasimodo across the store, looking for help with a blue boot dragging behind one foot and a sweat sock with a hole in the big toe on the other. I walked out of Zimmerman’s with sensible black roper boots. I’ve had those boots resoled twice and still wear them when I want to feel tough. Full of pride after buying my first pair of cowboy boots, I wore them to the very next rodeo in Shiprock, where the friendly folks around me explained the various types of rodeo competitions, including timed events such as barrel racing and roping, and roughstock events such as bull riding and bronco busting. In pro rodeos, women can compete only in barrel racing. (In amateur rodeos, they can also compete in roping categories.) Back in the 1920s, women rode bulls along with the boys, but after two women died while riding, the men became nervous and banned women from the rough-stock events. There are no statistics on how many men died doing the exact same thing. It is during the team and individual roping events that the stereotypical lasso comes out. In the individual event, a rider must throw the rope around the neck of a calf. The horse then leans back to pull tension on the rope. The cowboy jumps down, grabs the calf, and lays it down. Then, in some sleight-of-hand trick, he ties three of the calf’s hooves together in one fluid motion. The second he is done, the cowboy throws his arms up in the air to show he is finished—a combination of a magician’s “Ta-da!” and a gymnast’s “finish” position. It is the ultimate sign of confidence and completion. I started making that gesture in the newsroom when I would finish a story at deadline. I would type in the last period and throw my arms into the air, like I had just hog-tied a baby cow. After working in Gallup for two years, I moved to Santa Fe to work for the New Mexican newspaper. One of my first writing assignments was an article on road construction. Without thinking, as I typed in the final period, I threw my hands in the air. Most of the newsroom ignored me. But one woman, in jeans and cowboy boots, walked over to me and introduced herself, saying, “I can tell you’ve been to a rodeo or two.” She had grown up in Window Rock, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation, and found herself fighting the urge to do the same thing when she finished a story. It was she who told me about how a bull becomes part of the rodeo circuit. The bulls, along with the bucking horses, are trained to buck, and the best buckers are treated like royalty. One of the biggest names in bulls is Bushwacker, who has a Clint Eastwood stare and spots on his face that make him look diseased. He has been successfully ridden only twice since 2009. He bucks off 96 percent of cowboys in 3.3 seconds, leaving them far short of the required 8-second ride. Because bulls like Bushwacker are so prized, they are pampered and specially bred to work in rodeo. They are often given names designed to scare the cowboy—Fear Me, Bucking Machine, or Pain Maker—or scare the bull—Meat Hook or Crack the Whip. The cowboy who is able to ride for the full 8 seconds might go on to win the most prized trophy: a really, really enormous belt buckle. It was before moving to Santa Fe, when I was still making the rodeo rounds near Gallup, that I learned another rodeo rule the hard way: Never ask a woman if she is a “buckle bunny.” I had been told that you could tell a bunny by her denim shorts, small shirt, cowboy boots, and dedication to meeting the rodeo rider who has won the biggest buckle. I thought the perfect way to meet one was to write a story about bunnies. But I went to rodeo after rodeo and never saw one. It was late summer, and, with the rodeo season winding down, I was worried I’d never get an interview. I was at a rodeo in Grants when I finally spotted one through the crowd. She wasn’t wearing denim shorts, but instead had on a long purple skirt with a hem that reached down to the dirt, leaving only the tips of her boots visible. It was her blouse that made me suspect she was a bunny. It was very sheer; you could see everything underneath in the bright sunlight. Her bottom half was A Prairie Home Companion and her top half was exotic dancer. I pursued her past the cow-plop field, where people were betting on the exact spot a cow would defecate, and the mutton-busting ring, where toddlers in cowboy hats held tight to the backs of fluffy sheep. I finally caught up with her outside the burrito truck, where she was chatting with a bull rider still wearing his leather chaps. I introduced myself as a reporter and told her about the story I was working on. In hindsight, I probably should have thought it through. Let’s just say that you should never suggest that a woman might be out to find the man with the biggest buckle. I live in Albuquerque now, and the rodeos that come to town are held in indoor stadiums with artificial lighting. There is little chance any dust will get stuck in my lip gloss. That might be why I haven’t been to a rodeo in years; inside, a sense of wildness seems to be missing. But maybe the next time I drive past a hand-painted sign for a local rodeo as I go through Gallup or Grants or Cuba or Crownpoint, I might just stop for some Indian fry bread and sit for a moment on hot bleacher seats. I’ll wait for the wind to blow some dust in my face and see if I can spot a bull with a Clint Eastwood stare. And maybe I’ll finally find out what a latigo is.","id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f995","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/learning-the-ropes-86935/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/learning-the-ropes-86935/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/learning-the-ropes-86935/","metaTitle":"Learning the ropes - Don't wear lipstick to the rodeo","metaDescription":"One New-to-New-Mexico woman's experience with the rodeo, the good, the bad and the lip-smacking dirty.","cleanDescription":"NEED TO KNOW JULY RODEOS AND ROPING/RIDING EVENTS We recommend that you contact the individual rodeo associations or event promoters/hosts for the most up-to-date schedule and information. July 1 Mescalero Apache Powwow, Pro and Open Indian Rodeos, and Coming-of-Age Ceremony Amateur and pro competitors. Mescalero Apache Reservation, near Ruidoso. (575) 671-4494 July 4 Maverick Club Rodeo The longest-running open rodeo in the West. Amateur and pro competitors. Maverick Club Arena, in Cimarrón. (575) 376-2417; cimarronnm.com July 4–5 Rabbit Ear Round-up Rodeo Union County Fairgrounds, in Clayton. (575) 374-9253; claytonnewmexico.org July 11–12 Wild Thing Bull-Riding Championship The toughest riders on the meanest bulls compete in the top open bull-riding event in the Southwest. Sanctioned by the Professional Bull Riders association. Red Rock Park Arena, in Gallup. (505) 722-2228; thegallupchamber.com July 18–20 Little Beaver Rodeo Sanctioned by the All Indian Rodeo Cowboys Association and the Navajo Nation Rodeo Association, the event includes a powwow and carnival. Jicarilla Apache Reservation, in Dulce. (575) 759-3242; jicarillaonline.com July 25–27 Zia Regional Rodeo Sanctioned by the International Gay Rodeo Association, the rodeo is the second-largest LGBTQ event in the state. Rodeo de Santa Fe, in Santa Fe. (505) 833-1666; nmgra.org July 27 Harding County Ranch Rodeo This event hosts both men’s and women’s competitions, and is sanctioned by the Ranch Cowgirls Rodeo Association. Roy Events Center, in Roy. ranchcowgirlsrodeoassociation. com The first rule of watching rodeo: Don’t wear lip gloss. I learned this in 1994 at my very first rodeo in Gallup. My friends and I found our seats on the hot aluminum bleachers and munched on Indian fry bread while, in the middle of the rodeo ground a few feet away, a barrel racer riding a mustang made cloverleaf patterns around oil drums. At each tight turn, the mustang kicked up a puff of dust, which swirled up so the wind could catch it and throw it right in our faces. The lip gloss became like amber to ancient mosquitoes—it held the crystals of dust in a solid grip, encasing them for eternity. My lips actually made a crunching sound when I squeezed them together to free the sand. A month before, I’d moved to New Mexico from Florida to work at the Gallup Independent newspaper. My new home was an old double-wide trailer on the Navajo reservation just outside of town. During my commute to work, I saw cliffs of red rocks a half mile to the north, low hills covered in pine trees to the south, and absolutely nothing but horizon to the west and east. It was so unlike Florida’s Disney-esque version of life, where anything rough-edged or disobedient had to be paved over and made into a strip mall. I think that’s why, during the two years I lived in Gallup, I went to any rodeo I could in places like Farmington, Shiprock, Two Grey Hills, and Crownpoint. Everything about rodeo was rough-edged and disobedient. Not the least of which was the dust that turned my lip gloss into sandpaper that first day. The bulk of what I knew about rodeo came from countrywestern songs, so all I could tell you was that blood rhymed with mud , and latigo (whatever that was) didn’t rhyme with anything. I would try to listen as the announcers gave play-by-plays, but—as in the announcements to shoppers at the local Wal-Mart—the important information was said in Navajo. All I could say for sure was that cowboys with the last names Yazzie and Begay got the longest applause. If the rodeo was part of a county fair, it was easy to get distracted, because inevitably a powwow would be going on at the same time. Even if I didn’t have a clear view of the dancing area, I could faintly hear the beat of drums and almost see the intricate steps of the dancers, the ribbons of their costumes flowing like waves of color around them. I got good at spotting the powwow-rodeo moms who had sons in both competitions. The mother would perch on the highest bleacher seat above the rodeo grounds, keeping an eye on one son as he held tight to the back of a bronco and another eye on her other son as he did complicated dance steps at the powwow grounds next door. One day, heavy summer monsoon rains cut an arroyo through the dancing grounds, and the powwow was postponed. I paid more attention to the bulls and the blood, the dust and the mud. I still had no idea what was going on. Luckily, rodeo people are friendly, so everyone around me explained the finer points. For instance, real cowboys wear Wrangler jeans. The reason for this is historical. Wranglers were first made in the 1940s specifically for cowboys. The jeans featured back pockets that wouldn’t chafe while in the saddle, and the metal rivet in the crotch was replaced by a strong zigzag stitch, which sounds like a much-needed improvement. Wranglers are the official jeans of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which also has official hay distributors and official trailer hitches. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association also has official cowboy boots—Justin Boots, in business since 1879. When I decided to get a pair so that I could look like I belonged at a rodeo, I went to Zimmerman’s Western Wear on Route 66 in the middle of Gallup, next to Richardson’s Trading Post. More than 50 years ago, when Bob Dylan—aka Robert Zimmerman, from small-town Minnesota—wanted to create a cool persona, he said he was a Zimmerman from Gallup. I tried to play it as cool as Dylan as I went into the store, but I quickly got a turquoise-blue boot trapped halfway up my left foot. It would be hard for anyone to look cool hobbling like Quasimodo across the store, looking for help with a blue boot dragging behind one foot and a sweat sock with a hole in the big toe on the other. I walked out of Zimmerman’s with sensible black roper boots. I’ve had those boots resoled twice and still wear them when I want to feel tough. Full of pride after buying my first pair of cowboy boots, I wore them to the very next rodeo in Shiprock, where the friendly folks around me explained the various types of rodeo competitions, including timed events such as barrel racing and roping, and roughstock events such as bull riding and bronco busting. In pro rodeos, women can compete only in barrel racing. (In amateur rodeos, they can also compete in roping categories.) Back in the 1920s, women rode bulls along with the boys, but after two women died while riding, the men became nervous and banned women from the rough-stock events. There are no statistics on how many men died doing the exact same thing. It is during the team and individual roping events that the stereotypical lasso comes out. In the individual event, a rider must throw the rope around the neck of a calf. The horse then leans back to pull tension on the rope. The cowboy jumps down, grabs the calf, and lays it down. Then, in some sleight-of-hand trick, he ties three of the calf’s hooves together in one fluid motion. The second he is done, the cowboy throws his arms up in the air to show he is finished—a combination of a magician’s “Ta-da!” and a gymnast’s “finish” position. It is the ultimate sign of confidence and completion. I started making that gesture in the newsroom when I would finish a story at deadline. I would type in the last period and throw my arms into the air, like I had just hog-tied a baby cow. After working in Gallup for two years, I moved to Santa Fe to work for the New Mexican newspaper. One of my first writing assignments was an article on road construction. Without thinking, as I typed in the final period, I threw my hands in the air. Most of the newsroom ignored me. But one woman, in jeans and cowboy boots, walked over to me and introduced herself, saying, “I can tell you’ve been to a rodeo or two.” She had grown up in Window Rock, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation, and found herself fighting the urge to do the same thing when she finished a story. It was she who told me about how a bull becomes part of the rodeo circuit. The bulls, along with the bucking horses, are trained to buck, and the best buckers are treated like royalty. One of the biggest names in bulls is Bushwacker, who has a Clint Eastwood stare and spots on his face that make him look diseased. He has been successfully ridden only twice since 2009. He bucks off 96 percent of cowboys in 3.3 seconds, leaving them far short of the required 8-second ride. Because bulls like Bushwacker are so prized, they are pampered and specially bred to work in rodeo. They are often given names designed to scare the cowboy—Fear Me, Bucking Machine, or Pain Maker—or scare the bull—Meat Hook or Crack the Whip. The cowboy who is able to ride for the full 8 seconds might go on to win the most prized trophy: a really, really enormous belt buckle. It was before moving to Santa Fe, when I was still making the rodeo rounds near Gallup, that I learned another rodeo rule the hard way: Never ask a woman if she is a “buckle bunny.” I had been told that you could tell a bunny by her denim shorts, small shirt, cowboy boots, and dedication to meeting the rodeo rider who has won the biggest buckle. I thought the perfect way to meet one was to write a story about bunnies. But I went to rodeo after rodeo and never saw one. It was late summer, and, with the rodeo season winding down, I was worried I’d never get an interview. I was at a rodeo in Grants when I finally spotted one through the crowd. She wasn’t wearing denim shorts, but instead had on a long purple skirt with a hem that reached down to the dirt, leaving only the tips of her boots visible. It was her blouse that made me suspect she was a bunny. It was very sheer; you could see everything underneath in the bright sunlight. Her bottom half was A Prairie Home Companion and her top half was exotic dancer. I pursued her past the cow-plop field, where people were betting on the exact spot a cow would defecate, and the mutton-busting ring, where toddlers in cowboy hats held tight to the backs of fluffy sheep. I finally caught up with her outside the burrito truck, where she was chatting with a bull rider still wearing his leather chaps. I introduced myself as a reporter and told her about the story I was working on. In hindsight, I probably should have thought it through. Let’s just say that you should never suggest that a woman might be out to find the man with the biggest buckle. I live in Albuquerque now, and the rodeos that come to town are held in indoor stadiums with artificial lighting. There is little chance any dust will get stuck in my lip gloss. That might be why I haven’t been to a rodeo in years; inside, a sense of wildness seems to be missing. But maybe the next time I drive past a hand-painted sign for a local rodeo as I go through Gallup or Grants or Cuba or Crownpoint, I might just stop for some Indian fry bread and sit for a moment on hot bleacher seats. I’ll wait for the wind to blow some dust in my face and see if I can spot a bull with a Clint Eastwood stare. And maybe I’ll finally find out what a latigo is.","publish_start_moment":"2014-06-25T16:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.929Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f994","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1e7","title":"In Leopold’s Footsteps","slug":"leopold-86934","image_id":"58b4b24a4c2774661570f509","publish_start":"2014-06-25T16:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c83c8d1f16f9392cf09b83","58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4","58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a","58f5533b46da1c146c0fc752","58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc"],"tags_ids":["59090cede1efff4c9916fa4c","59090ce8e1efff4c9916fa49","59090e46e1efff4c9916fb37","59090ca9e1efff4c9916fa20","59090d23e1efff4c9916fa71"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_photo_credit":"Don Usner","custom_tagline":"A century of conservation efforts inspired by ecologist Aldo Leopold.","created":"2014-06-25T16:06:31.000Z","legacy_id":"86934","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"in leopold’s footsteps","updated":"2017-10-31T21:31:32.576Z","active":true,"description_raw":"

THERE IS A SULFUR BOG and a series of burping ponds in a little valley on the south end of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The aquamarine ponds that feed the marshy area below the valley emit a very particular rottenegg smell.

\r\n\r\n

Years ago, a road was cut through the forest and up the valley that lies alongside these wetlands. The road altered the way the water from rain and snowmelt ran down the hills and into the valley bottom. The result was that a series of deep gullies threatened to drain the sulfur bog and its ponds.

\r\n\r\n

On an August weekend, I joined about 20 other volunteers from the Albuquerque Wildlife Federation (AWF) to stop the gullies from reaching the wetlands and destroying them. That weekend we were building one-rock dams and Zuni bowls—simple, effective, and inexpensive stone structures that slow runoff, and trap sediment and seeds so that new grasses, bushes, and trees can take root, further slowing the water and stopping the erosion.

\r\n\r\n

This kind of volunteer-driven restoration work is the specialty of the Albuquerque Wildlife Federation, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this month.

\r\n\r\n

MOST OF THE HUNTERS who gathered in Albuquerque on July 21, 1914, had witnessed in their own lifetimes the extinction of the passenger pigeon and the decimation of the bison. They acknowledged that most of that damage was done by hunters like themselves, and reasoned that if things continued in the same way, there would soon be nothing left to hunt.

\r\n\r\n

The organization born from that meeting was the brainchild of Aldo Leopold, one of the first Forest Service managers in New Mexico and later author of the seminal ecology text A Sand County Almanac. Initially incorporated as the Albuquerque Game Protective Association, the sportsmen actively promoted wildlife protection laws, starting with the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

\r\n\r\n

During the following decades, the group advocated for a system of national game refuges, the creation of the State Game Commission, and closed deer- and elk-hunting seasons. They also made it a habit to publicly shame those who violated the new game laws. Over time, however, they focused less on hunting issues and more on overall species conservation. By the 1970s, AWF increasingly focused on ecological restoration work. By the 1990s, the reenergized nonprofit and its volunteers were leading the improvement of habitat for the sake of wildlife throughout the state.

\r\n\r\n

New Mexico’s landscape is not only an ecological treasure, but also an economic gold mine. Tourism generates approximately $5.9 billion for the state each year, and hunting, fishing, bird-watching, and other types of outdoor recreation are key contributors. Without a doubt, the health of the state’s economy is dependent on the health of the rivers, lakes, and wildlife habitat that support these activities. The work this small conservation group does reaches far beyond the rims of the canyons where they haul rocks and plant willows.

\r\n\r\n

THIS SUMMER, AWF volunteers will focus on nine habitat restoration projects throughout the state. One of these is Cebolla Canyon, in El Malpais National Monument, near Grants. Eighty years ago, a productive spring in the valley attracted a number of families who started truck farming. Unfortunately, the very road the farmers built to the area also drained the meadow and the spring. Eventually they had to move away, and cattle tramped into what was left of the wetland, destroying the plants that once held the soil in place. A massive arroyo grew in the canyon and the wildlife moved out. In 2000, AWF volunteers set to work, fencing the spring to keep the cows out, constructing small dams in the arroyo, and planting trees, shrubs, and grasses to help stop the erosion.

\r\n\r\n

“It took 70 years for the problem to get this bad, and it will take 70 years to fix it,” says Kristina Fisher, vice president of AWF. “But we’ve already seen 100 acres of wetland come back, as well as ducks, geese, salamanders, turkey, and elk.” The Sora rail and the yellow-headed blackbird, two bird species uncommon in New Mexico, also started nesting in the area again.

\r\n\r\n

Limestone Canyon, in the San Mateo Mountains southwest of Socorro, is a small, steep canyon dressed in towering ponderosa pines. Historic logging and cattle grazing in the area caused the stream to dry up and the cottonwood forest that grew along its banks to die off. For seven years, AWF has built an impressive number of one-rock dams in the streambed to get the water to slow down and seep into the ground.

\r\n\r\n

The results have been dramatic. The stream is flowing again, so much so that it is overflowing its banks at times and bringing nearby meadows back to life. Last year, volunteers found cottonwood sprouts, which have not been seen in the valley in more than 50 years. Elk and deer have also returned, and there is talk that the endangered Chiricahua leopard frog could even come back.

\r\n\r\n

“PERHAPS THE BIGGEST ecological impact of these projects is that we have a dedicated group of people with a long-term commitment to these places,” says Bill Zeedyk, the guru of watershed restoration in the American Southwest. A soft-spoken retired Forest Service manager, Zeedyk guides the AWF restoration work to ensure it has a scientific basis and a solid plan to work from.

\r\n\r\n

“You need to have people who are committed to the land. With a lot of these projects you can’t see an immediate result, but it grows over time,” he says. “The cumulative effect of years of volunteer work is ecologically significant.”

\r\n\r\n

The AWF restoration projects do indeed have a core group of volunteers, but they also have a wide range of people like me who join in when they can. There’s also a growing number of people from out of state who plan part of their visit to New Mexico to work with AWF.

\r\n\r\n

“This kind of work offers visitors to New Mexico the perfect opportunity to get to places they would never otherwise be able to see, and to meet New Mexicans they would never otherwise meet,” says AWF president Michael Scialdone. “Our projects are an ideal way for visitors to get an intimate connection with our state and the public lands that we all own.”

\r\n\r\n

It may seem hard to believe, but for many of us, carrying rocks, planting seedlings, building dams, and putting up fences is fun. It’s the kind of work that makes you feel like you’ve made a difference. Plus, at the end of a long workday there are buffalo burgers and fabulous campfire conversations.

\r\n\r\n

AWF volunteer restoration projects are listed on its website (abq.nmwildlife.org), as is information on its monthly meetings. The AWF will host its 100th anniversary celebration on Saturday, July 19, at the Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, near Albuquerque. The public is invited.

\r\n\r\n

“AWF was founded on the same principles that Aldo Leopold later articulated in his land ethic writings,” says Fisher. “That is, people should be citizens of the ecological community, not conquerors of it.” ✜

\r\n\r\n

Jim O’Donnell is the author of Notes for the Aurora Society: 1500 Miles on Foot Across Finland (Infinity Publishing, 2009). Find him in Taos and at aroundtheworldineightyyears.com.

","teaser_raw":"

THERE IS A SULFUR BOG and a series of burping ponds in a little valley on the south end of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The aquamarine ponds that feed the marshy area below the valley emit a

THERE IS A SULFUR BOG and a series of burping ponds in a little valley on the south end of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The aquamarine ponds that feed the marshy area below the valley emit a

","description":"THERE IS A SULFUR BOG and a series of burping ponds in a little valley on the south end of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The aquamarine ponds that feed the marshy area below the valley emit a very particular rottenegg smell. Years ago, a road was cut through the forest and up the valley that lies alongside these wetlands. The road altered the way the water from rain and snowmelt ran down the hills and into the valley bottom. The result was that a series of deep gullies threatened to drain the sulfur bog and its ponds. On an August weekend, I joined about 20 other volunteers from the Albuquerque Wildlife Federation (AWF) to stop the gullies from reaching the wetlands and destroying them. That weekend we were building one-rock dams and Zuni bowls—simple, effective, and inexpensive stone structures that slow runoff, and trap sediment and seeds so that new grasses, bushes, and trees can take root, further slowing the water and stopping the erosion. This kind of volunteer-driven restoration work is the specialty of the Albuquerque Wildlife Federation, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this month. MOST OF THE HUNTERS who gathered in Albuquerque on July 21, 1914, had witnessed in their own lifetimes the extinction of the passenger pigeon and the decimation of the bison. They acknowledged that most of that damage was done by hunters like themselves, and reasoned that if things continued in the same way, there would soon be nothing left to hunt. The organization born from that meeting was the brainchild of Aldo Leopold, one of the first Forest Service managers in New Mexico and later author of the seminal ecology text A Sand County Almanac. Initially incorporated as the Albuquerque Game Protective Association, the sportsmen actively promoted wildlife protection laws, starting with the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. During the following decades, the group advocated for a system of national game refuges, the creation of the State Game Commission, and closed deer- and elk-hunting seasons. They also made it a habit to publicly shame those who violated the new game laws. Over time, however, they focused less on hunting issues and more on overall species conservation. By the 1970s, AWF increasingly focused on ecological restoration work. By the 1990s, the reenergized nonprofit and its volunteers were leading the improvement of habitat for the sake of wildlife throughout the state. New Mexico’s landscape is not only an ecological treasure, but also an economic gold mine. Tourism generates approximately $5.9 billion for the state each year, and hunting, fishing, bird-watching, and other types of outdoor recreation are key contributors. Without a doubt, the health of the state’s economy is dependent on the health of the rivers, lakes, and wildlife habitat that support these activities. The work this small conservation group does reaches far beyond the rims of the canyons where they haul rocks and plant willows. THIS SUMMER, AWF volunteers will focus on nine habitat restoration projects throughout the state. One of these is Cebolla Canyon, in El Malpais National Monument, near Grants. Eighty years ago, a productive spring in the valley attracted a number of families who started truck farming. Unfortunately, the very road the farmers built to the area also drained the meadow and the spring. Eventually they had to move away, and cattle tramped into what was left of the wetland, destroying the plants that once held the soil in place. A massive arroyo grew in the canyon and the wildlife moved out. In 2000, AWF volunteers set to work, fencing the spring to keep the cows out, constructing small dams in the arroyo, and planting trees, shrubs, and grasses to help stop the erosion. “It took 70 years for the problem to get this bad, and it will take 70 years to fix it,” says Kristina Fisher, vice president of AWF. “But we’ve already seen 100 acres of wetland come back, as well as ducks, geese, salamanders, turkey, and elk.” The Sora rail and the yellow-headed blackbird, two bird species uncommon in New Mexico, also started nesting in the area again. Limestone Canyon, in the San Mateo Mountains southwest of Socorro, is a small, steep canyon dressed in towering ponderosa pines. Historic logging and cattle grazing in the area caused the stream to dry up and the cottonwood forest that grew along its banks to die off. For seven years, AWF has built an impressive number of one-rock dams in the streambed to get the water to slow down and seep into the ground. The results have been dramatic. The stream is flowing again, so much so that it is overflowing its banks at times and bringing nearby meadows back to life. Last year, volunteers found cottonwood sprouts, which have not been seen in the valley in more than 50 years. Elk and deer have also returned, and there is talk that the endangered Chiricahua leopard frog could even come back. “PERHAPS THE BIGGEST ecological impact of these projects is that we have a dedicated group of people with a long-term commitment to these places,” says Bill Zeedyk, the guru of watershed restoration in the American Southwest. A soft-spoken retired Forest Service manager, Zeedyk guides the AWF restoration work to ensure it has a scientific basis and a solid plan to work from. “You need to have people who are committed to the land. With a lot of these projects you can’t see an immediate result, but it grows over time,” he says. “The cumulative effect of years of volunteer work is ecologically significant.” The AWF restoration projects do indeed have a core group of volunteers, but they also have a wide range of people like me who join in when they can. There’s also a growing number of people from out of state who plan part of their visit to New Mexico to work with AWF. “This kind of work offers visitors to New Mexico the perfect opportunity to get to places they would never otherwise be able to see, and to meet New Mexicans they would never otherwise meet,” says AWF president Michael Scialdone. “Our projects are an ideal way for visitors to get an intimate connection with our state and the public lands that we all own.” It may seem hard to believe, but for many of us, carrying rocks, planting seedlings, building dams, and putting up fences is fun. It’s the kind of work that makes you feel like you’ve made a difference. Plus, at the end of a long workday there are buffalo burgers and fabulous campfire conversations. AWF volunteer restoration projects are listed on its website ( abq.nmwildlife.org ), as is information on its monthly meetings. The AWF will host its 100th anniversary celebration on Saturday, July 19, at the Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, near Albuquerque. The public is invited. “AWF was founded on the same principles that Aldo Leopold later articulated in his land ethic writings,” says Fisher. “That is, people should be citizens of the ecological community, not conquerors of it.” ✜ Jim O’Donnell is the author of Notes for the Aurora Society: 1500 Miles on Foot Across Finland (Infinity Publishing, 2009). Find him in Taos and at aroundtheworldineightyyears.com .","id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f994","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/leopold-86934/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/leopold-86934/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/leopold-86934/","metaTitle":"In Leopold’s Footsteps","metaDescription":"

THERE IS A SULFUR BOG and a series of burping ponds in a little valley on the south end of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The aquamarine ponds that feed the marshy area below the valley emit a

","cleanDescription":"THERE IS A SULFUR BOG and a series of burping ponds in a little valley on the south end of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The aquamarine ponds that feed the marshy area below the valley emit a very particular rottenegg smell. Years ago, a road was cut through the forest and up the valley that lies alongside these wetlands. The road altered the way the water from rain and snowmelt ran down the hills and into the valley bottom. The result was that a series of deep gullies threatened to drain the sulfur bog and its ponds. On an August weekend, I joined about 20 other volunteers from the Albuquerque Wildlife Federation (AWF) to stop the gullies from reaching the wetlands and destroying them. That weekend we were building one-rock dams and Zuni bowls—simple, effective, and inexpensive stone structures that slow runoff, and trap sediment and seeds so that new grasses, bushes, and trees can take root, further slowing the water and stopping the erosion. This kind of volunteer-driven restoration work is the specialty of the Albuquerque Wildlife Federation, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this month. MOST OF THE HUNTERS who gathered in Albuquerque on July 21, 1914, had witnessed in their own lifetimes the extinction of the passenger pigeon and the decimation of the bison. They acknowledged that most of that damage was done by hunters like themselves, and reasoned that if things continued in the same way, there would soon be nothing left to hunt. The organization born from that meeting was the brainchild of Aldo Leopold, one of the first Forest Service managers in New Mexico and later author of the seminal ecology text A Sand County Almanac. Initially incorporated as the Albuquerque Game Protective Association, the sportsmen actively promoted wildlife protection laws, starting with the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. During the following decades, the group advocated for a system of national game refuges, the creation of the State Game Commission, and closed deer- and elk-hunting seasons. They also made it a habit to publicly shame those who violated the new game laws. Over time, however, they focused less on hunting issues and more on overall species conservation. By the 1970s, AWF increasingly focused on ecological restoration work. By the 1990s, the reenergized nonprofit and its volunteers were leading the improvement of habitat for the sake of wildlife throughout the state. New Mexico’s landscape is not only an ecological treasure, but also an economic gold mine. Tourism generates approximately $5.9 billion for the state each year, and hunting, fishing, bird-watching, and other types of outdoor recreation are key contributors. Without a doubt, the health of the state’s economy is dependent on the health of the rivers, lakes, and wildlife habitat that support these activities. The work this small conservation group does reaches far beyond the rims of the canyons where they haul rocks and plant willows. THIS SUMMER, AWF volunteers will focus on nine habitat restoration projects throughout the state. One of these is Cebolla Canyon, in El Malpais National Monument, near Grants. Eighty years ago, a productive spring in the valley attracted a number of families who started truck farming. Unfortunately, the very road the farmers built to the area also drained the meadow and the spring. Eventually they had to move away, and cattle tramped into what was left of the wetland, destroying the plants that once held the soil in place. A massive arroyo grew in the canyon and the wildlife moved out. In 2000, AWF volunteers set to work, fencing the spring to keep the cows out, constructing small dams in the arroyo, and planting trees, shrubs, and grasses to help stop the erosion. “It took 70 years for the problem to get this bad, and it will take 70 years to fix it,” says Kristina Fisher, vice president of AWF. “But we’ve already seen 100 acres of wetland come back, as well as ducks, geese, salamanders, turkey, and elk.” The Sora rail and the yellow-headed blackbird, two bird species uncommon in New Mexico, also started nesting in the area again. Limestone Canyon, in the San Mateo Mountains southwest of Socorro, is a small, steep canyon dressed in towering ponderosa pines. Historic logging and cattle grazing in the area caused the stream to dry up and the cottonwood forest that grew along its banks to die off. For seven years, AWF has built an impressive number of one-rock dams in the streambed to get the water to slow down and seep into the ground. The results have been dramatic. The stream is flowing again, so much so that it is overflowing its banks at times and bringing nearby meadows back to life. Last year, volunteers found cottonwood sprouts, which have not been seen in the valley in more than 50 years. Elk and deer have also returned, and there is talk that the endangered Chiricahua leopard frog could even come back. “PERHAPS THE BIGGEST ecological impact of these projects is that we have a dedicated group of people with a long-term commitment to these places,” says Bill Zeedyk, the guru of watershed restoration in the American Southwest. A soft-spoken retired Forest Service manager, Zeedyk guides the AWF restoration work to ensure it has a scientific basis and a solid plan to work from. “You need to have people who are committed to the land. With a lot of these projects you can’t see an immediate result, but it grows over time,” he says. “The cumulative effect of years of volunteer work is ecologically significant.” The AWF restoration projects do indeed have a core group of volunteers, but they also have a wide range of people like me who join in when they can. There’s also a growing number of people from out of state who plan part of their visit to New Mexico to work with AWF. “This kind of work offers visitors to New Mexico the perfect opportunity to get to places they would never otherwise be able to see, and to meet New Mexicans they would never otherwise meet,” says AWF president Michael Scialdone. “Our projects are an ideal way for visitors to get an intimate connection with our state and the public lands that we all own.” It may seem hard to believe, but for many of us, carrying rocks, planting seedlings, building dams, and putting up fences is fun. It’s the kind of work that makes you feel like you’ve made a difference. Plus, at the end of a long workday there are buffalo burgers and fabulous campfire conversations. AWF volunteer restoration projects are listed on its website ( abq.nmwildlife.org ), as is information on its monthly meetings. The AWF will host its 100th anniversary celebration on Saturday, July 19, at the Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, near Albuquerque. The public is invited. “AWF was founded on the same principles that Aldo Leopold later articulated in his land ethic writings,” says Fisher. “That is, people should be citizens of the ecological community, not conquerors of it.” ✜ Jim O’Donnell is the author of Notes for the Aurora Society: 1500 Miles on Foot Across Finland (Infinity Publishing, 2009). Find him in Taos and at aroundtheworldineightyyears.com .","publish_start_moment":"2014-06-25T16:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.929Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f993","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f23e","title":"NM Book Reviews","slug":"book-reviews-86933","image_id":"58b4b2494c2774661570f4ef","publish_start":"2014-06-25T16:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","58b4b2404c2774661570f28c","58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc"],"tags_ids":["59090c80e1efff4c9916fa05","59090c74e1efff4c9916f9fd","59090d23e1efff4c9916fa71"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_tagline":"Featuring Meadowlark by Dawn Wink and If there's squash bugs in heaven, i ain't staying.","created":"2014-06-25T16:04:05.000Z","legacy_id":"86933","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"nm book reviews","updated":"2017-10-31T21:31:32.375Z","active":true,"description_raw":"

IF THERE’S SQUASH BUGS IN HEAVEN, I AIN’T STAYING: Learning to Make the Perfect Pie, Sing When You Need to and Find the Way Home with Farmer Evelyn \r\nPHOTOS AND TEXT BY STACIA SPRAGG-BRAUDE (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2013)

\r\n\r\n

Writer/photographer Stacia Spragg-Braude combines elements of memoir, biography, and local history in this compelling portrait of Corrales orchard farmer Evelyn Losack. Through example and homespun wisdom, Losack provides a powerful lesson in the meaning and value of place and community in the modern world. Anyone interested in fruit pies, indomitable characters, the struggle of family farming against encroaching urbanism, and whether an Indiana transplant like the author can plant roots and thrive in her adopted New Mexico will have plenty to savor in this fascinating book.

\r\n\r\n

In the octogenarian Losack, Spragg- Braude finds her muse and mentor. A Corrales resident herself, Spragg-Braude chronicles their relationship and explores Losack’s family history in graceful words and revealing photographs. It turns out neither Losack nor that family story can be separated from the farm or the village around it.

\r\n\r\n

The author meets Losack when they serve together on the village’s farmland preservation committee. Losack mentions to Spragg-Braude that she can’t keep up with the garden on her family’s 18-acre farm. Spragg-Braude offers to help. As the book unfolds, Spragg-Braude pitches in, working alongside the spry, tireless Losack in the seasonal round of farming chores and tasks. A New Mexico–style Renaissance woman, Losack can crack a joke, teach a village child piano, sing opera, and launch a vendetta on squash bugs—the bane of every valley farmer—in a seamless flow of relentless activity.

\r\n\r\n

A former newspaper photographer with the now-defunct Albuquerque Tribune, and author of To Walk in Beauty (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2009), Spragg-Braude proves herself a capable reporter with an eye for the telling detail. With notebook, pen, and cheap Holga camera in hand, Spragg-Braude works alongside Losack on everything from planting, weeding, and picking to making tamales for Christmas and tending family graves in the local church cemetery. And don’t forget baking pies, a specialty of Losack’s, who has never met a recipe that couldn’t be fudged on the fly: “A few handfuls of flour here, some baking powder there, a fresh goose egg, why not,” the author writes.

\r\n\r\n

Organizing the book by the seasons, Spragg-Braude pieces together a mosaic of stories and pictures that at first seem random, but then gradually spiral inward to reveal her own motivation: how she can become part of this place, too. You do that by giving yourself wholly to it, she decides, “plunging your arms up to your elbows in its soil, climbing its trees, letting your voice go in the wind. It’s about not forgetting who came before you and from where you came.” Under Evelyn’s tutoring-by-example, Spragg- Braude learns to embrace her querencia, a “connection to a place that cannot be severed.” She describes it as “the place your soul craves …. It may not be the place you were born, but it is the place where you belong.”

\r\n\r\n

-CP

\r\n\r\n

MEADOWLARK BY DAWN WINK \r\n(Pronghorn Press, 2013)

\r\n\r\n

In January of 1907, a young ranch girl named Grace received a gift from her mother, a journal for recording her various adventures. Four years later, 16-year-old Grace married a man named Tom and moved to his sod hut on the western South Dakota prairies. Her journal went with her. About 100 years later, Grace’s journal and her wedding dress find their way to her great-granddaughter Dawn Wink in Santa Fe, and so begins the true-life tale that wraps itself in and around Wink’s first novel, Meadowlark.

\r\n\r\n

Wink, it so happened, had already begun a writing project based on the life of her great-grandmother and other ranch women who settled on the harsh Dakota prairies in the early 20th century. But deep into her research, her marriage and her life in Santa Fe crumbled. She shelved her writing and took refuge on the same South Dakota parcel, in the house Tom built for Grace, and where her own parents continue to ranch today.

\r\n\r\n

Eventually, as Wink explains in the afternotes of Meadowlark, she returned to Santa Fe, determined to start over. But Grace, whose presence permeated the ranch house during her healing retreat, wouldn’t let her go. When the journal found its way to her, with what felt like Grace’s own blessing, she returned to her novel with fresh enthusiasm.

\r\n\r\n

Meadowlark tells the story of a teen bride also named Grace. It begins on her wedding day, which quickly turns into an event that is anything but joyous. Her new husband is a brutal man, and he frequently abuses not only his young wife, but his dogs and horses as well. She soon discovers that she is only safe when he is riding far out on the range. She becomes a virtual prisoner in the dingy sod hut that has become her home.

\r\n\r\n

Grace slowly makes friends with a half-Lakota widow and a young woman doctor who have both settled nearby. These friendships become her refuge as her life grows darker, her husband meaner. Life on the prairie was not exactly soft to begin with. As she and her neighbors battle grass fires and tornadoes, droughts and blizzards, she tries to bury her feelings and her soul in the hard work of the ranch. The raw beauty of her natural surroundings sustains her, when she is able to see it.

\r\n\r\n

Wink’s historical research and family history pay off in Meadowlark, as the reader is immersed with great detail in the rugged life of a homesteading ranch wife. Although a contemporary sensibility seeps in now and then, the author creates a boldly honest internal narrative of a victimized woman without options. That Grace is able to survive—and eventually even find a kind of cautious happiness—is testament to the raw courage such a harsh life required.

\r\n\r\n

-CV

","teaser_raw":"

IF THERE’S SQUASH BUGS IN HEAVEN, I AIN’T STAYING: Learning to Make the Perfect Pie, Sing When You Need to and Find the Way Home with Farmer Evelyn PHOTOS AND TEXT BY STACIA SPRAGG-BRAUDE (Museum of

IF THERE’S SQUASH BUGS IN HEAVEN, I AIN’T STAYING: Learning to Make the Perfect Pie, Sing When You Need to and Find the Way Home with Farmer Evelyn PHOTOS AND TEXT BY STACIA SPRAGG-BRAUDE (Museum of

","description":"IF THERE’S SQUASH BUGS IN HEAVEN, I AIN’T STAYING: Learning to Make the Perfect Pie, Sing When You Need to and Find the Way Home with Farmer Evelyn PHOTOS AND TEXT BY STACIA SPRAGG-BRAUDE (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2013) Writer/photographer Stacia Spragg-Braude combines elements of memoir, biography, and local history in this compelling portrait of Corrales orchard farmer Evelyn Losack. Through example and homespun wisdom, Losack provides a powerful lesson in the meaning and value of place and community in the modern world. Anyone interested in fruit pies, indomitable characters, the struggle of family farming against encroaching urbanism, and whether an Indiana transplant like the author can plant roots and thrive in her adopted New Mexico will have plenty to savor in this fascinating book. In the octogenarian Losack, Spragg- Braude finds her muse and mentor. A Corrales resident herself, Spragg-Braude chronicles their relationship and explores Losack’s family history in graceful words and revealing photographs. It turns out neither Losack nor that family story can be separated from the farm or the village around it. The author meets Losack when they serve together on the village’s farmland preservation committee. Losack mentions to Spragg-Braude that she can’t keep up with the garden on her family’s 18-acre farm. Spragg-Braude offers to help. As the book unfolds, Spragg-Braude pitches in, working alongside the spry, tireless Losack in the seasonal round of farming chores and tasks. A New Mexico–style Renaissance woman, Losack can crack a joke, teach a village child piano, sing opera, and launch a vendetta on squash bugs—the bane of every valley farmer—in a seamless flow of relentless activity. A former newspaper photographer with the now-defunct Albuquerque Tribune , and author of To Walk in Beauty (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2009), Spragg-Braude proves herself a capable reporter with an eye for the telling detail. With notebook, pen, and cheap Holga camera in hand, Spragg-Braude works alongside Losack on everything from planting, weeding, and picking to making tamales for Christmas and tending family graves in the local church cemetery. And don’t forget baking pies, a specialty of Losack’s, who has never met a recipe that couldn’t be fudged on the fly: “A few handfuls of flour here, some baking powder there, a fresh goose egg, why not,” the author writes. Organizing the book by the seasons, Spragg-Braude pieces together a mosaic of stories and pictures that at first seem random, but then gradually spiral inward to reveal her own motivation: how she can become part of this place, too. You do that by giving yourself wholly to it, she decides, “plunging your arms up to your elbows in its soil, climbing its trees, letting your voice go in the wind. It’s about not forgetting who came before you and from where you came.” Under Evelyn’s tutoring-by-example, Spragg- Braude learns to embrace her querencia, a “connection to a place that cannot be severed.” She describes it as “the place your soul craves …. It may not be the place you were born, but it is the place where you belong.” -CP MEADOWLARK BY DAWN WINK (Pronghorn Press, 2013) In January of 1907, a young ranch girl named Grace received a gift from her mother, a journal for recording her various adventures. Four years later, 16-year-old Grace married a man named Tom and moved to his sod hut on the western South Dakota prairies. Her journal went with her. About 100 years later, Grace’s journal and her wedding dress find their way to her great-granddaughter Dawn Wink in Santa Fe, and so begins the true-life tale that wraps itself in and around Wink’s first novel, Meadowlark . Wink, it so happened, had already begun a writing project based on the life of her great-grandmother and other ranch women who settled on the harsh Dakota prairies in the early 20th century. But deep into her research, her marriage and her life in Santa Fe crumbled. She shelved her writing and took refuge on the same South Dakota parcel, in the house Tom built for Grace, and where her own parents continue to ranch today. Eventually, as Wink explains in the afternotes of Meadowlark , she returned to Santa Fe, determined to start over. But Grace, whose presence permeated the ranch house during her healing retreat, wouldn’t let her go. When the journal found its way to her, with what felt like Grace’s own blessing, she returned to her novel with fresh enthusiasm. Meadowlark tells the story of a teen bride also named Grace. It begins on her wedding day, which quickly turns into an event that is anything but joyous. Her new husband is a brutal man, and he frequently abuses not only his young wife, but his dogs and horses as well. She soon discovers that she is only safe when he is riding far out on the range. She becomes a virtual prisoner in the dingy sod hut that has become her home. Grace slowly makes friends with a half-Lakota widow and a young woman doctor who have both settled nearby. These friendships become her refuge as her life grows darker, her husband meaner. Life on the prairie was not exactly soft to begin with. As she and her neighbors battle grass fires and tornadoes, droughts and blizzards, she tries to bury her feelings and her soul in the hard work of the ranch. The raw beauty of her natural surroundings sustains her, when she is able to see it. Wink’s historical research and family history pay off in Meadowlark , as the reader is immersed with great detail in the rugged life of a homesteading ranch wife. Although a contemporary sensibility seeps in now and then, the author creates a boldly honest internal narrative of a victimized woman without options. That Grace is able to survive—and eventually even find a kind of cautious happiness—is testament to the raw courage such a harsh life required. -CV","id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f993","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/book-reviews-86933/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/book-reviews-86933/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/book-reviews-86933/","metaTitle":"NM Book Reviews","metaDescription":"

IF THERE’S SQUASH BUGS IN HEAVEN, I AIN’T STAYING: Learning to Make the Perfect Pie, Sing When You Need to and Find the Way Home with Farmer Evelyn PHOTOS AND TEXT BY STACIA SPRAGG-BRAUDE (Museum of

","cleanDescription":"IF THERE’S SQUASH BUGS IN HEAVEN, I AIN’T STAYING: Learning to Make the Perfect Pie, Sing When You Need to and Find the Way Home with Farmer Evelyn PHOTOS AND TEXT BY STACIA SPRAGG-BRAUDE (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2013) Writer/photographer Stacia Spragg-Braude combines elements of memoir, biography, and local history in this compelling portrait of Corrales orchard farmer Evelyn Losack. Through example and homespun wisdom, Losack provides a powerful lesson in the meaning and value of place and community in the modern world. Anyone interested in fruit pies, indomitable characters, the struggle of family farming against encroaching urbanism, and whether an Indiana transplant like the author can plant roots and thrive in her adopted New Mexico will have plenty to savor in this fascinating book. In the octogenarian Losack, Spragg- Braude finds her muse and mentor. A Corrales resident herself, Spragg-Braude chronicles their relationship and explores Losack’s family history in graceful words and revealing photographs. It turns out neither Losack nor that family story can be separated from the farm or the village around it. The author meets Losack when they serve together on the village’s farmland preservation committee. Losack mentions to Spragg-Braude that she can’t keep up with the garden on her family’s 18-acre farm. Spragg-Braude offers to help. As the book unfolds, Spragg-Braude pitches in, working alongside the spry, tireless Losack in the seasonal round of farming chores and tasks. A New Mexico–style Renaissance woman, Losack can crack a joke, teach a village child piano, sing opera, and launch a vendetta on squash bugs—the bane of every valley farmer—in a seamless flow of relentless activity. A former newspaper photographer with the now-defunct Albuquerque Tribune , and author of To Walk in Beauty (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2009), Spragg-Braude proves herself a capable reporter with an eye for the telling detail. With notebook, pen, and cheap Holga camera in hand, Spragg-Braude works alongside Losack on everything from planting, weeding, and picking to making tamales for Christmas and tending family graves in the local church cemetery. And don’t forget baking pies, a specialty of Losack’s, who has never met a recipe that couldn’t be fudged on the fly: “A few handfuls of flour here, some baking powder there, a fresh goose egg, why not,” the author writes. Organizing the book by the seasons, Spragg-Braude pieces together a mosaic of stories and pictures that at first seem random, but then gradually spiral inward to reveal her own motivation: how she can become part of this place, too. You do that by giving yourself wholly to it, she decides, “plunging your arms up to your elbows in its soil, climbing its trees, letting your voice go in the wind. It’s about not forgetting who came before you and from where you came.” Under Evelyn’s tutoring-by-example, Spragg- Braude learns to embrace her querencia, a “connection to a place that cannot be severed.” She describes it as “the place your soul craves …. It may not be the place you were born, but it is the place where you belong.” -CP MEADOWLARK BY DAWN WINK (Pronghorn Press, 2013) In January of 1907, a young ranch girl named Grace received a gift from her mother, a journal for recording her various adventures. Four years later, 16-year-old Grace married a man named Tom and moved to his sod hut on the western South Dakota prairies. Her journal went with her. About 100 years later, Grace’s journal and her wedding dress find their way to her great-granddaughter Dawn Wink in Santa Fe, and so begins the true-life tale that wraps itself in and around Wink’s first novel, Meadowlark . Wink, it so happened, had already begun a writing project based on the life of her great-grandmother and other ranch women who settled on the harsh Dakota prairies in the early 20th century. But deep into her research, her marriage and her life in Santa Fe crumbled. She shelved her writing and took refuge on the same South Dakota parcel, in the house Tom built for Grace, and where her own parents continue to ranch today. Eventually, as Wink explains in the afternotes of Meadowlark , she returned to Santa Fe, determined to start over. But Grace, whose presence permeated the ranch house during her healing retreat, wouldn’t let her go. When the journal found its way to her, with what felt like Grace’s own blessing, she returned to her novel with fresh enthusiasm. Meadowlark tells the story of a teen bride also named Grace. It begins on her wedding day, which quickly turns into an event that is anything but joyous. Her new husband is a brutal man, and he frequently abuses not only his young wife, but his dogs and horses as well. She soon discovers that she is only safe when he is riding far out on the range. She becomes a virtual prisoner in the dingy sod hut that has become her home. Grace slowly makes friends with a half-Lakota widow and a young woman doctor who have both settled nearby. These friendships become her refuge as her life grows darker, her husband meaner. Life on the prairie was not exactly soft to begin with. As she and her neighbors battle grass fires and tornadoes, droughts and blizzards, she tries to bury her feelings and her soul in the hard work of the ranch. The raw beauty of her natural surroundings sustains her, when she is able to see it. Wink’s historical research and family history pay off in Meadowlark , as the reader is immersed with great detail in the rugged life of a homesteading ranch wife. Although a contemporary sensibility seeps in now and then, the author creates a boldly honest internal narrative of a victimized woman without options. That Grace is able to survive—and eventually even find a kind of cautious happiness—is testament to the raw courage such a harsh life required. -CV","publish_start_moment":"2014-06-25T16:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.930Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f992","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f1f6","title":"Growing Pains, Solved","slug":"nm-living-growing-pains-solved-86932","image_id":"58b4b24a4c2774661570f4fe","publish_start":"2014-06-25T16:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c83bb81f16f9392cf09b52","58b4b2404c2774661570f2fb","58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc"],"tags_ids":["59090d4be1efff4c9916fa90","59090da3e1efff4c9916fad6","59090d23e1efff4c9916fa71"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_photo_credit":"Charles Mann","custom_tagline":"Ten tips for beautifying your property, under tough conditions.","created":"2014-06-25T16:03:00.000Z","legacy_id":"86932","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"growing pains, solved","updated":"2017-10-31T21:31:32.529Z","active":true,"description_raw":"

FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green, pine green, cholla green, and more shades appear. Put a spade into soil, add some compost, sprinkle with water, and you might even coax red, yellow, pink, and purple from trees, shrubs, vegetables, flowers, and succulents.

\r\n\r\n

Desert gardens provide challenges only worsened by our ongoing regional drought. But this isn’t Death Valley—it’s still the Land of Enchantment. Here are a few first steps to invite beauty into your yard.

\r\n\r\n

1. XERISCAPE, DON’T ZERO-SCAPE\r\nBorn in 1981, the word xeriscape defines a type of low-water-use landscaping (xeros means dry in Greek). As it gained popularity, a few folks went overboard, coating their yards in nomaintenance gravel.

\r\n\r\n

Rocks play an important role in defining your yard, minimizing weeds, and making a star out of the plants you fall in love with, but they shouldn’t steal the show. Xeriscape appeals to minimalists. Done right, its spare number of well-chosen species thrive on mere sips of water.

\r\n\r\n

One of the best practitioners of the art is Albuquerque-based landscape designer Judith Phillips (judithphillipsdesignoasis.com). She’s written four books with tips on mapping out designs, choosing water-wise plants, and tending them. My favorites: Southwestern Landscaping with Native Plants (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987) and New Mexico Gardener’s Guide (Cool Springs Press, 2005).

\r\n\r\n

2. HERE’S THE DIRT\r\nUnless you’re lucky enough to live on an old floodplain, your soil has too much sand, too much clay, or too much caliche. For certain, the pH level is too alkaline; most plants seem to adore higher acid levels. To ascertain your soil’s profile and how it should be amended, collect a sample using a soil kit provided by your county’s Cooperative Extension Service, then mail it to their recommended lab at Colorado State University. Find its address, among others, at mynm.us/soillabs. (You’ll also want to bookmark aces.nmsu.edu/ aes/labs.html. This site contains an encyclopedia’s worth of advice on every agri-thing.) You can learn a lot on your own simply by spading around the yard and eyeballing your dirt. Chances are, it lacks organic matter and needs healthy helpings of aged manure, leaf mold, sawdust, straw, or store-bought compost. Dig it in at least as deep as a shovel head— or as much as your back muscles tolerate. Rule of Yard Work No. 1: The garden will bend to your abilities faster than your abilities will rise to its demands.

\r\n\r\n

3. MOTHER NATURE KNOWS BEST\r\nGo on lots of hikes and study what you see. What kinds of plants bask in the sun? Which seek shelter in the shade? Do certain plants cluster around boulders? Mimic those cues in your yard and you’re one step closer to practicing permaculture—a type of ecological design that works with nature rather than against it. Good sources for purchasing native plants include Plants of the Southwest, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the Santa Ana Pueblo’s Native Plant Nursery.

\r\n\r\n

4. BE A BUSY-BODY\r\nNew Mexico’s micro-zones can outsmart your plans. Plants that thrive even a few miles away may wither in your yard. Visit the neighbors to see what they have blooming. Walk around the block. Take a garden tour. Ask everyone what they did right. And wrong.

\r\n\r\n

5. GET SCHOOLED\r\nCounty Cooperative Extension Services throughout the state offer Master Gardener trainings every year, and often the graduates hold one-day workshops on topics like pruning or dealing with pests. Check them out online or give your county’s office a jingle. Besides Judith Phillips’ books, good titles include the Sunset Western Garden Book (Oxmoor House, 2007), the basic bible for general reference; Down to Earth: A Gardener’s Guide to the Albuquerque Area, by Albuquerque Master Gardeners; and Baker H. Morrow’s Best Plants for New Mexico Gardens and Landscapes (University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Morrow’s book separates the state into regions, a handy tool given the vast differences in altitude. High Country Gardens puts its years of wisdom online (highcountrygardens.com).

\r\n\r\n

6. THE ESSENTIAL TOOLS\r\nIn time, you may own a wheelbarrow, chain saw, post-hole digger, pitchfork, hoe, edger, three kinds of pruners, various spades, and more. Until then, keep it simple. You can’t do a thing without a pair of gloves and a big strong shovel. If your soil contains clay or caliche, invest in a pickax. A heavy bow rake moves soil; a leaf rake sweeps the top clean. For hand tools, a trowel and pruners will go a long way. Add a bottle of ibuprofen to soothe the muscles all that work strains.

\r\n\r\n

7. CONSIDER CONTAINERS\r\nI’ve grown tomatoes, kale, herbs, fennel, and chile in patio pots. Santa Fe–based Grow Y’Own sells raised garden beds with hooped tops for creating year-round mini-greenhouses. The aluminum watering troughs sold at feed stores make cool pots with a sleek-but-stillcountry style. Containers offer complete control over soil, are easy to water, eliminate stoop labor, and dissuade rabbits. Drainage can be a problem, so make sure the bottom of whatever you use has holes. The deeper the container, the more soil you’ll need. Consider starting with a layer of rocks. The oft-trumpeted Styrofoam-peanut layer sounds like lightweight fun until you need to tend the soil. Rule of Yard Work No. 2: In a yard or a container, you will need to tend the soil for the rest of your garden’s life.

\r\n\r\n

8. TOP IT OFF\r\nDesert sun and spring winds strip moisture from that modified soil. A layer of mulch slows down evaporation and suppresses weeds. A few inches of organic material, rocks, tumbled glass, or even shredded rubber will work. Organic choices include pine needles, bark, pecan shells, leaves, straw, and grass clippings. Once they decompose, you can work them into the soil. Check to see if your local landfill composts green waste and offers it for sale by the truckload.

\r\n\r\n

9. A THIRST THAT KILLS\r\nEven if you amend the soil and pick perfect plants, rainfall alone won’t suffice. Forget sprinklers—they’re best at watering the air. Drip irrigation is the gold standard for New Mexico. Give it a helping hand when planting trees or shrubs by creating an earthen moat to hold a puddle of water. Rainwater zooms off any hard surface. Capture roof runoff in rain barrels (Tijeras Rain Barrels sells them in a variety of cheery colors and finishes), or terrace your yard so that each tier slows down the streams. Permaculturists use pumice wicks, gabions, swales, and other water tricks. Read Harvest the Rain: How to Enrich Your Life by Seeing Every Storm as a Resource, by Santa Fe’s Nate Downey (Sunstone Press, 2010), or visit sfpermaculture.com. (And see our April 2013 article “The Lush Life,” mynm.us/downey13.)

\r\n\r\n

10. REALITY BITES\r\nRule of Yard Work No. 3: Things go wrong. Temperatures soar, hail falls, rabbits nibble, and the lowly bark beetle lays waste to entire forests. Why bother? Like a lot of things in life, gardening is more about the process than the goal. Learn some science. Play with design principles. Spend hours outdoors working your mind, body, and spirit as you till the soil and baby the tender sprouts. Wrap your heart around the act of gardening and the actual garden will follow, beautiful and imperfect, together as one.

\r\n\r\n

Kate Nelson lives and gardens in Placitas.

","teaser_raw":"

FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green,

FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green,

","description":"FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green, pine green, cholla green, and more shades appear. Put a spade into soil, add some compost, sprinkle with water, and you might even coax red, yellow, pink, and purple from trees, shrubs, vegetables, flowers, and succulents. Desert gardens provide challenges only worsened by our ongoing regional drought. But this isn’t Death Valley—it’s still the Land of Enchantment. Here are a few first steps to invite beauty into your yard. 1. XERISCAPE, DON’T ZERO-SCAPE Born in 1981, the word xeriscape defines a type of low-water-use landscaping (xeros means dry in Greek). As it gained popularity, a few folks went overboard, coating their yards in nomaintenance gravel. Rocks play an important role in defining your yard, minimizing weeds, and making a star out of the plants you fall in love with, but they shouldn’t steal the show. Xeriscape appeals to minimalists. Done right, its spare number of well-chosen species thrive on mere sips of water. One of the best practitioners of the art is Albuquerque-based landscape designer Judith Phillips ( judithphillipsdesignoasis.com ). She’s written four books with tips on mapping out designs, choosing water-wise plants, and tending them. My favorites: Southwestern Landscaping with Native Plants (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987) and New Mexico Gardener’s Guide (Cool Springs Press, 2005). 2. HERE’S THE DIRT Unless you’re lucky enough to live on an old floodplain, your soil has too much sand, too much clay, or too much caliche. For certain, the pH level is too alkaline; most plants seem to adore higher acid levels. To ascertain your soil’s profile and how it should be amended, collect a sample using a soil kit provided by your county’s Cooperative Extension Service, then mail it to their recommended lab at Colorado State University. Find its address, among others, at mynm.us/soillabs. (You’ll also want to bookmark aces.nmsu.edu/ aes/labs.html. This site contains an encyclopedia’s worth of advice on every agri-thing.) You can learn a lot on your own simply by spading around the yard and eyeballing your dirt. Chances are, it lacks organic matter and needs healthy helpings of aged manure, leaf mold, sawdust, straw, or store-bought compost. Dig it in at least as deep as a shovel head— or as much as your back muscles tolerate. Rule of Yard Work No. 1: The garden will bend to your abilities faster than your abilities will rise to its demands. 3. MOTHER NATURE KNOWS BEST Go on lots of hikes and study what you see. What kinds of plants bask in the sun? Which seek shelter in the shade? Do certain plants cluster around boulders? Mimic those cues in your yard and you’re one step closer to practicing permaculture—a type of ecological design that works with nature rather than against it. Good sources for purchasing native plants include Plants of the Southwest, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the Santa Ana Pueblo’s Native Plant Nursery. 4. BE A BUSY-BODY New Mexico’s micro-zones can outsmart your plans. Plants that thrive even a few miles away may wither in your yard. Visit the neighbors to see what they have blooming. Walk around the block. Take a garden tour. Ask everyone what they did right. And wrong. 5. GET SCHOOLED County Cooperative Extension Services throughout the state offer Master Gardener trainings every year, and often the graduates hold one-day workshops on topics like pruning or dealing with pests. Check them out online or give your county’s office a jingle. Besides Judith Phillips’ books, good titles include the Sunset Western Garden Book (Oxmoor House, 2007), the basic bible for general reference; Down to Earth: A Gardener’s Guide to the Albuquerque Area, by Albuquerque Master Gardeners; and Baker H. Morrow’s Best Plants for New Mexico Gardens and Landscapes (University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Morrow’s book separates the state into regions, a handy tool given the vast differences in altitude. High Country Gardens puts its years of wisdom online (highcountrygardens.com). 6. THE ESSENTIAL TOOLS In time, you may own a wheelbarrow, chain saw, post-hole digger, pitchfork, hoe, edger, three kinds of pruners, various spades, and more. Until then, keep it simple. You can’t do a thing without a pair of gloves and a big strong shovel. If your soil contains clay or caliche, invest in a pickax. A heavy bow rake moves soil; a leaf rake sweeps the top clean. For hand tools, a trowel and pruners will go a long way. Add a bottle of ibuprofen to soothe the muscles all that work strains. 7. CONSIDER CONTAINERS I’ve grown tomatoes, kale, herbs, fennel, and chile in patio pots. Santa Fe–based Grow Y’Own sells raised garden beds with hooped tops for creating year-round mini-greenhouses. The aluminum watering troughs sold at feed stores make cool pots with a sleek-but-stillcountry style. Containers offer complete control over soil, are easy to water, eliminate stoop labor, and dissuade rabbits. Drainage can be a problem, so make sure the bottom of whatever you use has holes. The deeper the container, the more soil you’ll need. Consider starting with a layer of rocks. The oft-trumpeted Styrofoam-peanut layer sounds like lightweight fun until you need to tend the soil. Rule of Yard Work No. 2: In a yard or a container, you will need to tend the soil for the rest of your garden’s life. 8. TOP IT OFF Desert sun and spring winds strip moisture from that modified soil. A layer of mulch slows down evaporation and suppresses weeds. A few inches of organic material, rocks, tumbled glass, or even shredded rubber will work. Organic choices include pine needles, bark, pecan shells, leaves, straw, and grass clippings. Once they decompose, you can work them into the soil. Check to see if your local landfill composts green waste and offers it for sale by the truckload. 9. A THIRST THAT KILLS Even if you amend the soil and pick perfect plants, rainfall alone won’t suffice. Forget sprinklers—they’re best at watering the air. Drip irrigation is the gold standard for New Mexico. Give it a helping hand when planting trees or shrubs by creating an earthen moat to hold a puddle of water. Rainwater zooms off any hard surface. Capture roof runoff in rain barrels (Tijeras Rain Barrels sells them in a variety of cheery colors and finishes), or terrace your yard so that each tier slows down the streams. Permaculturists use pumice wicks, gabions, swales, and other water tricks. Read Harvest the Rain: How to Enrich Your Life by Seeing Every Storm as a Resource, by Santa Fe’s Nate Downey (Sunstone Press, 2010), or visit sfpermaculture.com . (And see our April 2013 article “The Lush Life,” mynm.us/downey13 .) 10. REALITY BITES Rule of Yard Work No. 3: Things go wrong. Temperatures soar, hail falls, rabbits nibble, and the lowly bark beetle lays waste to entire forests. Why bother? Like a lot of things in life, gardening is more about the process than the goal. Learn some science. Play with design principles. Spend hours outdoors working your mind, body, and spirit as you till the soil and baby the tender sprouts. Wrap your heart around the act of gardening and the actual garden will follow, beautiful and imperfect, together as one. Kate Nelson lives and gardens in Placitas.","id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f992","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/nm-living-growing-pains-solved-86932/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/nm-living-growing-pains-solved-86932/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/nm-living-growing-pains-solved-86932/","metaTitle":"Growing Pains, Solved","metaDescription":"

FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green,

","cleanDescription":"FORGIVE THE FIRST-TIME visitor flying into New Mexico who looks down and mutters: “Sure looks gray, brown, and dry.” From the air, that may be the case. But when your feet touch ground, sage green, pine green, cholla green, and more shades appear. Put a spade into soil, add some compost, sprinkle with water, and you might even coax red, yellow, pink, and purple from trees, shrubs, vegetables, flowers, and succulents. Desert gardens provide challenges only worsened by our ongoing regional drought. But this isn’t Death Valley—it’s still the Land of Enchantment. Here are a few first steps to invite beauty into your yard. 1. XERISCAPE, DON’T ZERO-SCAPE Born in 1981, the word xeriscape defines a type of low-water-use landscaping (xeros means dry in Greek). As it gained popularity, a few folks went overboard, coating their yards in nomaintenance gravel. Rocks play an important role in defining your yard, minimizing weeds, and making a star out of the plants you fall in love with, but they shouldn’t steal the show. Xeriscape appeals to minimalists. Done right, its spare number of well-chosen species thrive on mere sips of water. One of the best practitioners of the art is Albuquerque-based landscape designer Judith Phillips ( judithphillipsdesignoasis.com ). She’s written four books with tips on mapping out designs, choosing water-wise plants, and tending them. My favorites: Southwestern Landscaping with Native Plants (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987) and New Mexico Gardener’s Guide (Cool Springs Press, 2005). 2. HERE’S THE DIRT Unless you’re lucky enough to live on an old floodplain, your soil has too much sand, too much clay, or too much caliche. For certain, the pH level is too alkaline; most plants seem to adore higher acid levels. To ascertain your soil’s profile and how it should be amended, collect a sample using a soil kit provided by your county’s Cooperative Extension Service, then mail it to their recommended lab at Colorado State University. Find its address, among others, at mynm.us/soillabs. (You’ll also want to bookmark aces.nmsu.edu/ aes/labs.html. This site contains an encyclopedia’s worth of advice on every agri-thing.) You can learn a lot on your own simply by spading around the yard and eyeballing your dirt. Chances are, it lacks organic matter and needs healthy helpings of aged manure, leaf mold, sawdust, straw, or store-bought compost. Dig it in at least as deep as a shovel head— or as much as your back muscles tolerate. Rule of Yard Work No. 1: The garden will bend to your abilities faster than your abilities will rise to its demands. 3. MOTHER NATURE KNOWS BEST Go on lots of hikes and study what you see. What kinds of plants bask in the sun? Which seek shelter in the shade? Do certain plants cluster around boulders? Mimic those cues in your yard and you’re one step closer to practicing permaculture—a type of ecological design that works with nature rather than against it. Good sources for purchasing native plants include Plants of the Southwest, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the Santa Ana Pueblo’s Native Plant Nursery. 4. BE A BUSY-BODY New Mexico’s micro-zones can outsmart your plans. Plants that thrive even a few miles away may wither in your yard. Visit the neighbors to see what they have blooming. Walk around the block. Take a garden tour. Ask everyone what they did right. And wrong. 5. GET SCHOOLED County Cooperative Extension Services throughout the state offer Master Gardener trainings every year, and often the graduates hold one-day workshops on topics like pruning or dealing with pests. Check them out online or give your county’s office a jingle. Besides Judith Phillips’ books, good titles include the Sunset Western Garden Book (Oxmoor House, 2007), the basic bible for general reference; Down to Earth: A Gardener’s Guide to the Albuquerque Area, by Albuquerque Master Gardeners; and Baker H. Morrow’s Best Plants for New Mexico Gardens and Landscapes (University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Morrow’s book separates the state into regions, a handy tool given the vast differences in altitude. High Country Gardens puts its years of wisdom online (highcountrygardens.com). 6. THE ESSENTIAL TOOLS In time, you may own a wheelbarrow, chain saw, post-hole digger, pitchfork, hoe, edger, three kinds of pruners, various spades, and more. Until then, keep it simple. You can’t do a thing without a pair of gloves and a big strong shovel. If your soil contains clay or caliche, invest in a pickax. A heavy bow rake moves soil; a leaf rake sweeps the top clean. For hand tools, a trowel and pruners will go a long way. Add a bottle of ibuprofen to soothe the muscles all that work strains. 7. CONSIDER CONTAINERS I’ve grown tomatoes, kale, herbs, fennel, and chile in patio pots. Santa Fe–based Grow Y’Own sells raised garden beds with hooped tops for creating year-round mini-greenhouses. The aluminum watering troughs sold at feed stores make cool pots with a sleek-but-stillcountry style. Containers offer complete control over soil, are easy to water, eliminate stoop labor, and dissuade rabbits. Drainage can be a problem, so make sure the bottom of whatever you use has holes. The deeper the container, the more soil you’ll need. Consider starting with a layer of rocks. The oft-trumpeted Styrofoam-peanut layer sounds like lightweight fun until you need to tend the soil. Rule of Yard Work No. 2: In a yard or a container, you will need to tend the soil for the rest of your garden’s life. 8. TOP IT OFF Desert sun and spring winds strip moisture from that modified soil. A layer of mulch slows down evaporation and suppresses weeds. A few inches of organic material, rocks, tumbled glass, or even shredded rubber will work. Organic choices include pine needles, bark, pecan shells, leaves, straw, and grass clippings. Once they decompose, you can work them into the soil. Check to see if your local landfill composts green waste and offers it for sale by the truckload. 9. A THIRST THAT KILLS Even if you amend the soil and pick perfect plants, rainfall alone won’t suffice. Forget sprinklers—they’re best at watering the air. Drip irrigation is the gold standard for New Mexico. Give it a helping hand when planting trees or shrubs by creating an earthen moat to hold a puddle of water. Rainwater zooms off any hard surface. Capture roof runoff in rain barrels (Tijeras Rain Barrels sells them in a variety of cheery colors and finishes), or terrace your yard so that each tier slows down the streams. Permaculturists use pumice wicks, gabions, swales, and other water tricks. Read Harvest the Rain: How to Enrich Your Life by Seeing Every Storm as a Resource, by Santa Fe’s Nate Downey (Sunstone Press, 2010), or visit sfpermaculture.com . (And see our April 2013 article “The Lush Life,” mynm.us/downey13 .) 10. REALITY BITES Rule of Yard Work No. 3: Things go wrong. Temperatures soar, hail falls, rabbits nibble, and the lowly bark beetle lays waste to entire forests. Why bother? Like a lot of things in life, gardening is more about the process than the goal. Learn some science. Play with design principles. Spend hours outdoors working your mind, body, and spirit as you till the soil and baby the tender sprouts. Wrap your heart around the act of gardening and the actual garden will follow, beautiful and imperfect, together as one. Kate Nelson lives and gardens in Placitas.","publish_start_moment":"2014-06-25T16:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.930Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f991","title":"One of Our 50 is Found!","slug":"one-of-our-50-is-found-july-2014-86834","publish_start":"2014-06-18T13:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc","58b4b2404c2774661570f266"],"tags_ids":["59090d23e1efff4c9916fa71","59090c0be1efff4c9916f953"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_tagline":"A-HA! Moments when our readers realized that New Mexico was the place for them.","created":"2014-06-18T13:40:27.000Z","legacy_id":"86834","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"one of our 50 is found!","updated":"2017-10-31T21:31:32.435Z","active":true,"description_raw":"

\r\nHave you had an A-ha! moment?\r\nIf we print your A-ha! moment, you’ll get a cool cap with this clever logo: “New Mexico, not really new and not really Mexico.”™ (You can also buy the hat at shop.nmmagazine.com.)\r\n\r\nSend your anecdote with name and mailing address to fifty@nmmagazine.com, or mail to Fifty Found, New Mexico Magazine, 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501.

\r\n\r\n

PINING FOR NM \r\nWhile living in Wyoming and newly divorced, I was searching for a new teaching job. Looking through the listings, I saw one in New Mexico, but thought, “Oh no. I don’t want to go that far and live in the desert.” But I was desperate. The superintendent’s secretary, in a small town called Los Alamos, said Dr. Richard would be coming to Denver to interview several candidates. At least I would see what was offered. At the interview, Dr. Richard showed me a beautiful brochure of northern New Mexico. The piñon trees and big ponderosas resembled the little jack pine and big white pines of my native Michigan. And there was an outdoor skating rink at the bottom of a canyon! I was sold.

\r\n\r\n

My daughter and I arrived at night, too dark to see much but the road ahead. In the morning, we decided to explore. I had to stop, awestruck at the scene before us: a majestic canyon with walls of all shades of colors, a deep green valley, and in the purple distance, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains topped with snow. I was breathless, and not just because of the high altitude. That was the A-ha! moment—in fact, I used the scene in my first novel The Adobe Castle (Ashley House, 1999).

\r\n\r\n

For more than 40 years, I have lived in New Mexico and continue to relish more of these moments: the moon and Venus against a turquoise sunset, dazzling Orion on black nights, the deer in my back yard that come up to look in the window, and the view of the town from woodland trails, where I jog to prepare for the Senior Olympics.\r\nInez Ross \r\nLos Alamos

\r\n\r\n

SEE WHAT I MEAN? \r\nMy wife and I met in Houston, where I was attending the University of Houston. Cindy, who grew up in Ruidoso, kept telling me that she “could not see” in Houston. I told her that she should just step out into the street, and then she would be able to see quite a ways. A few months later, she transferred out of Texas to Las Cruces, and with her went my heart. After graduation, I got a job in the Las Cruces area. Moving to New Mexico I learned, to my surprise, what my wife meant about not seeing. Being able to look in any direction and see forever was an eye-opening experience.

\r\n\r\n

I quickly became very accustomed to the vistas and beauty of the Land of Enchantment: watching the Organ Mountains change colors as the sun went down, then seeing the light race across the desert as the sun came up from behind the mountains each morning; driving from Las Cruces to Ruidoso in the spring and seeing the desert bloom; seeing the stars like I’d never seen them before.

\r\n\r\n

Whenever we would go back to Texas to visit family, I’d quickly become claustrophobic, and wanted to get back to New Mexico as quickly as possible.\r\nDan Odum \r\nCentennial, CO

\r\n\r\n

COYOTE MEDICINE \r\nI had never been to the Southwest before needing to attend back-to-back depositions in Tucson and Albuquerque in 1989. At the time, I was in-house counsel for a forklift manufacturer from the snowbelt in upstate New York. After my Arizona deposition, I went out to the Sonoran Desert and watched the sunset. I was at peace. “It’s nice here,” I thought. But then came New Mexico.

\r\n\r\n

As I was standing at the window on the fifth or sixth floor of a small office building, waiting for the deposition to start, I looked out at the empty lot next door.

I was hooked as I watched the creature adeptly avoid humans and disappear behind some bushes. Talking to my husband on the phone from my hotel room early the next morning, I chattered on about how we had to come to New Mexico on vacation. At the same time, I drew back the drapes in the room, only to see three hot-air balloons rising in front of the mountains.

\r\n\r\n

“It’s a sign,” I almost screamed into the phone. (I am nothing if not dramatic.)

\r\n\r\n

I have always loved hot-air balloons. Maybe it was a sign, maybe not, but for the next 17 years (until I could take early retirement), every vacation day was hoarded to come back to what felt like home.

\r\n\r\n

Now, the coyotes howling are a nightly occurrence, and while I worry about the feral cat and watch our beagles after dark, I always offer a silent thought of gratitude to the first “mangy dog” I ever saw.\r\nPat Shukis Fraser \r\nRuidoso

\r\n\r\n

YOU MAY SAY I’M A DREAMER, BUT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE \r\nYears ago, while living in Michigan, I vividly dreamt that I was the sole passenger on a long handcart. I was rolling along with steady speed on railroad tracks. I wasn’t doing any cranking aboard this odd flatcar, just traveling, effortlessly and without a worry, across America. The railroad aspect of the dream made sense because, since 2002, I had been working as a train conductor and locomotive engineer.

\r\n\r\n

In this dream, I rolled through flat green fields of Midwestern grain until the landscape turned from green corn to caliche rock, then to mesquite and ground-hugging cactus. The sky seemed to widen while this flatcar moved with smooth speed. A golden sun glowed over the horizon until a dark curtain of star-flecked night dropped. Planets and stars wheeled overhead while the steel wheels below me clicked in rhythm.

\r\n\r\n

Another day in the dream dawned. Still rolling, I saw vivid colors in the sky chasing the sun. I reached a new area while crouched on the handcar. It was an enchanted place of blue plateaus and towering mountains. The car came to a smooth stop on its own, and I stood on my own two feet for the first time in what seemed ages. I noticed that the twilight contained colors I had no name for. There was a complete absence of worry in me. The dream ended with a feeling of rising yet serene exultation.

\r\n\r\n

A few years later, the dream manifested in my waking life. After working in various railroad operations in Joliet, Illinois, and south of Detroit, I did find my way out West. I didn’t wind up rolling out on a handcar, but in an 18-year-old van. The dream completed itself in life, and a new cycle started. I was on my way to the bestpaying railroad job of my career, in Hobbs, New Mexico.

\r\n\r\n

I’ve been living well in Hobbs for almost a year now. On my days off, I take drives out to the Sacramento Mountains, White Sands National Monument, Bottomless Lakes, and Mescalero Sands. My list of places to see grows constantly. New Mexico is still a place where there is room to fulfill your dreams, the sun at your back.

\r\n\r\n

Ben Anderson \r\nHobbs

","teaser_raw":"

Have you had an A-ha! moment? If we print your A-ha! moment, you’ll get a cool cap with this clever logo: “New Mexico, not really new and not really Mexico.”™ (You can also buy the hat at

Have you had an A-ha! moment? If we print your A-ha! moment, you’ll get a cool cap with this clever logo: “New Mexico, not really new and not really Mexico.”™ (You can also buy the hat at

","description":"Have you had an A-ha! moment? If we print your A-ha! moment, you’ll get a cool cap with this clever logo: “New Mexico, not really new and not really Mexico.”™ (You can also buy the hat at shop.nmmagazine.com .) Send your anecdote with name and mailing address to fifty@nmmagazine.com , or mail to Fifty Found, New Mexico Magazine, 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501. PINING FOR NM While living in Wyoming and newly divorced, I was searching for a new teaching job. Looking through the listings, I saw one in New Mexico, but thought, “Oh no. I don’t want to go that far and live in the desert.” But I was desperate. The superintendent’s secretary, in a small town called Los Alamos, said Dr. Richard would be coming to Denver to interview several candidates. At least I would see what was offered. At the interview, Dr. Richard showed me a beautiful brochure of northern New Mexico. The piñon trees and big ponderosas resembled the little jack pine and big white pines of my native Michigan. And there was an outdoor skating rink at the bottom of a canyon! I was sold. My daughter and I arrived at night, too dark to see much but the road ahead. In the morning, we decided to explore. I had to stop, awestruck at the scene before us: a majestic canyon with walls of all shades of colors, a deep green valley, and in the purple distance, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains topped with snow. I was breathless, and not just because of the high altitude. That was the A-ha! moment—in fact, I used the scene in my first novel The Adobe Castle (Ashley House, 1999). For more than 40 years, I have lived in New Mexico and continue to relish more of these moments: the moon and Venus against a turquoise sunset, dazzling Orion on black nights, the deer in my back yard that come up to look in the window, and the view of the town from woodland trails, where I jog to prepare for the Senior Olympics. Inez Ross Los Alamos SEE WHAT I MEAN? My wife and I met in Houston, where I was attending the University of Houston. Cindy, who grew up in Ruidoso, kept telling me that she “could not see” in Houston. I told her that she should just step out into the street, and then she would be able to see quite a ways. A few months later, she transferred out of Texas to Las Cruces, and with her went my heart. After graduation, I got a job in the Las Cruces area. Moving to New Mexico I learned, to my surprise, what my wife meant about not seeing. Being able to look in any direction and see forever was an eye-opening experience. I quickly became very accustomed to the vistas and beauty of the Land of Enchantment: watching the Organ Mountains change colors as the sun went down, then seeing the light race across the desert as the sun came up from behind the mountains each morning; driving from Las Cruces to Ruidoso in the spring and seeing the desert bloom; seeing the stars like I’d never seen them before. Whenever we would go back to Texas to visit family, I’d quickly become claustrophobic, and wanted to get back to New Mexico as quickly as possible. Dan Odum Centennial, CO COYOTE MEDICINE I had never been to the Southwest before needing to attend back-to-back depositions in Tucson and Albuquerque in 1989. At the time, I was in-house counsel for a forklift manufacturer from the snowbelt in upstate New York. After my Arizona deposition, I went out to the Sonoran Desert and watched the sunset. I was at peace. “It’s nice here,” I thought. But then came New Mexico. As I was standing at the window on the fifth or sixth floor of a small office building, waiting for the deposition to start, I looked out at the empty lot next door. “What a mangy looking dog,” I said. The room (all locals) erupted in laughter. “That’s a coyote,” howled one of the other attorneys in the room. I was hooked as I watched the creature adeptly avoid humans and disappear behind some bushes. Talking to my husband on the phone from my hotel room early the next morning, I chattered on about how we had to come to New Mexico on vacation. At the same time, I drew back the drapes in the room, only to see three hot-air balloons rising in front of the mountains. “It’s a sign,” I almost screamed into the phone. (I am nothing if not dramatic.) I have always loved hot-air balloons. Maybe it was a sign, maybe not, but for the next 17 years (until I could take early retirement), every vacation day was hoarded to come back to what felt like home. Now, the coyotes howling are a nightly occurrence, and while I worry about the feral cat and watch our beagles after dark, I always offer a silent thought of gratitude to the first “mangy dog” I ever saw. Pat Shukis Fraser Ruidoso YOU MAY SAY I’M A DREAMER, BUT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE Years ago, while living in Michigan, I vividly dreamt that I was the sole passenger on a long handcart. I was rolling along with steady speed on railroad tracks. I wasn’t doing any cranking aboard this odd flatcar, just traveling, effortlessly and without a worry, across America. The railroad aspect of the dream made sense because, since 2002, I had been working as a train conductor and locomotive engineer. In this dream, I rolled through flat green fields of Midwestern grain until the landscape turned from green corn to caliche rock, then to mesquite and ground-hugging cactus. The sky seemed to widen while this flatcar moved with smooth speed. A golden sun glowed over the horizon until a dark curtain of star-flecked night dropped. Planets and stars wheeled overhead while the steel wheels below me clicked in rhythm. Another day in the dream dawned. Still rolling, I saw vivid colors in the sky chasing the sun. I reached a new area while crouched on the handcar. It was an enchanted place of blue plateaus and towering mountains. The car came to a smooth stop on its own, and I stood on my own two feet for the first time in what seemed ages. I noticed that the twilight contained colors I had no name for. There was a complete absence of worry in me. The dream ended with a feeling of rising yet serene exultation. A few years later, the dream manifested in my waking life. After working in various railroad operations in Joliet, Illinois, and south of Detroit, I did find my way out West. I didn’t wind up rolling out on a handcar, but in an 18-year-old van. The dream completed itself in life, and a new cycle started. I was on my way to the bestpaying railroad job of my career, in Hobbs, New Mexico. I’ve been living well in Hobbs for almost a year now. On my days off, I take drives out to the Sacramento Mountains, White Sands National Monument, Bottomless Lakes, and Mescalero Sands. My list of places to see grows constantly. New Mexico is still a place where there is room to fulfill your dreams, the sun at your back. Ben Anderson Hobbs","id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f991","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-our-50-is-found-july-2014-86834/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-our-50-is-found-july-2014-86834/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-our-50-is-found-july-2014-86834/","metaTitle":"One of Our 50 is Found!","metaDescription":"

Have you had an A-ha! moment? If we print your A-ha! moment, you’ll get a cool cap with this clever logo: “New Mexico, not really new and not really Mexico.”™ (You can also buy the hat at

","cleanDescription":"Have you had an A-ha! moment? If we print your A-ha! moment, you’ll get a cool cap with this clever logo: “New Mexico, not really new and not really Mexico.”™ (You can also buy the hat at shop.nmmagazine.com .) Send your anecdote with name and mailing address to fifty@nmmagazine.com , or mail to Fifty Found, New Mexico Magazine, 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501. PINING FOR NM While living in Wyoming and newly divorced, I was searching for a new teaching job. Looking through the listings, I saw one in New Mexico, but thought, “Oh no. I don’t want to go that far and live in the desert.” But I was desperate. The superintendent’s secretary, in a small town called Los Alamos, said Dr. Richard would be coming to Denver to interview several candidates. At least I would see what was offered. At the interview, Dr. Richard showed me a beautiful brochure of northern New Mexico. The piñon trees and big ponderosas resembled the little jack pine and big white pines of my native Michigan. And there was an outdoor skating rink at the bottom of a canyon! I was sold. My daughter and I arrived at night, too dark to see much but the road ahead. In the morning, we decided to explore. I had to stop, awestruck at the scene before us: a majestic canyon with walls of all shades of colors, a deep green valley, and in the purple distance, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains topped with snow. I was breathless, and not just because of the high altitude. That was the A-ha! moment—in fact, I used the scene in my first novel The Adobe Castle (Ashley House, 1999). For more than 40 years, I have lived in New Mexico and continue to relish more of these moments: the moon and Venus against a turquoise sunset, dazzling Orion on black nights, the deer in my back yard that come up to look in the window, and the view of the town from woodland trails, where I jog to prepare for the Senior Olympics. Inez Ross Los Alamos SEE WHAT I MEAN? My wife and I met in Houston, where I was attending the University of Houston. Cindy, who grew up in Ruidoso, kept telling me that she “could not see” in Houston. I told her that she should just step out into the street, and then she would be able to see quite a ways. A few months later, she transferred out of Texas to Las Cruces, and with her went my heart. After graduation, I got a job in the Las Cruces area. Moving to New Mexico I learned, to my surprise, what my wife meant about not seeing. Being able to look in any direction and see forever was an eye-opening experience. I quickly became very accustomed to the vistas and beauty of the Land of Enchantment: watching the Organ Mountains change colors as the sun went down, then seeing the light race across the desert as the sun came up from behind the mountains each morning; driving from Las Cruces to Ruidoso in the spring and seeing the desert bloom; seeing the stars like I’d never seen them before. Whenever we would go back to Texas to visit family, I’d quickly become claustrophobic, and wanted to get back to New Mexico as quickly as possible. Dan Odum Centennial, CO COYOTE MEDICINE I had never been to the Southwest before needing to attend back-to-back depositions in Tucson and Albuquerque in 1989. At the time, I was in-house counsel for a forklift manufacturer from the snowbelt in upstate New York. After my Arizona deposition, I went out to the Sonoran Desert and watched the sunset. I was at peace. “It’s nice here,” I thought. But then came New Mexico. As I was standing at the window on the fifth or sixth floor of a small office building, waiting for the deposition to start, I looked out at the empty lot next door. “What a mangy looking dog,” I said. The room (all locals) erupted in laughter. “That’s a coyote,” howled one of the other attorneys in the room. I was hooked as I watched the creature adeptly avoid humans and disappear behind some bushes. Talking to my husband on the phone from my hotel room early the next morning, I chattered on about how we had to come to New Mexico on vacation. At the same time, I drew back the drapes in the room, only to see three hot-air balloons rising in front of the mountains. “It’s a sign,” I almost screamed into the phone. (I am nothing if not dramatic.) I have always loved hot-air balloons. Maybe it was a sign, maybe not, but for the next 17 years (until I could take early retirement), every vacation day was hoarded to come back to what felt like home. Now, the coyotes howling are a nightly occurrence, and while I worry about the feral cat and watch our beagles after dark, I always offer a silent thought of gratitude to the first “mangy dog” I ever saw. Pat Shukis Fraser Ruidoso YOU MAY SAY I’M A DREAMER, BUT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE Years ago, while living in Michigan, I vividly dreamt that I was the sole passenger on a long handcart. I was rolling along with steady speed on railroad tracks. I wasn’t doing any cranking aboard this odd flatcar, just traveling, effortlessly and without a worry, across America. The railroad aspect of the dream made sense because, since 2002, I had been working as a train conductor and locomotive engineer. In this dream, I rolled through flat green fields of Midwestern grain until the landscape turned from green corn to caliche rock, then to mesquite and ground-hugging cactus. The sky seemed to widen while this flatcar moved with smooth speed. A golden sun glowed over the horizon until a dark curtain of star-flecked night dropped. Planets and stars wheeled overhead while the steel wheels below me clicked in rhythm. Another day in the dream dawned. Still rolling, I saw vivid colors in the sky chasing the sun. I reached a new area while crouched on the handcar. It was an enchanted place of blue plateaus and towering mountains. The car came to a smooth stop on its own, and I stood on my own two feet for the first time in what seemed ages. I noticed that the twilight contained colors I had no name for. There was a complete absence of worry in me. The dream ended with a feeling of rising yet serene exultation. A few years later, the dream manifested in my waking life. After working in various railroad operations in Joliet, Illinois, and south of Detroit, I did find my way out West. I didn’t wind up rolling out on a handcar, but in an 18-year-old van. The dream completed itself in life, and a new cycle started. I was on my way to the bestpaying railroad job of my career, in Hobbs, New Mexico. I’ve been living well in Hobbs for almost a year now. On my days off, I take drives out to the Sacramento Mountains, White Sands National Monument, Bottomless Lakes, and Mescalero Sands. My list of places to see grows constantly. New Mexico is still a place where there is room to fulfill your dreams, the sun at your back. Ben Anderson Hobbs","publish_start_moment":"2014-06-18T13:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.930Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f990","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f240","title":"Art Without Borders","slug":"artscapes-july-2014-86833","publish_start":"2014-06-18T13:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58c839601f16f9392cf09a98","58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc","58b4b2404c2774661570f27b","58ed168096df945d13d07701"],"tags_ids":["59090c80e1efff4c9916fa05","59090d23e1efff4c9916fa71","59090c53e1efff4c9916f9ec","59090c49e1efff4c9916f9e6"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_photo_credit":"Kate Russell","custom_tagline":"A world-class contemporary art space, SITE Santa Fe aims to redefine the biennial.","created":"2014-06-18T13:39:01.000Z","legacy_id":"86833","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"art without borders","updated":"2017-10-31T21:31:32.469Z","active":true,"description_raw":"

\r\n\r\n

NEED TO KNOW\r\nUnsettled Landscapes is the first of three biennial exhibitions in SITE Santa Fe’s six-year project SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas. Thursday, July 17, opening night events include a cocktail party and exhibition preview (5–7 p.m.) at SITE Santa Fe, and a gala dinner with artists, curators, and special guests (7:30 p.m.) at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Pavilion. Friday, July 18, Unsettled Landscapes artist Pablo Helguera presents a performance at 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. at San Miguel Chapel, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail. Saturday, July 19 (11 a.m.– 2:30 p.m.), the Davidoff Art Initiative presents a SITElines panel discussion featuring artists from the Caribbean at the Armory for the Arts Theater. At 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, Unsettled Landscapes opens to the public at SITE Santa Fe. It runs through Jan. 11, 2015. (505) 989-1199; sitesantafe.org

\r\n\r\n

IN JULY 1995, inside an unassuming 19,000-square-foot warehouse near the wellworn train tracks of the Santa Fe Railyard District, a new chapter in the history of contemporary art in America was forged. It was in this space, known as SITE Santa Fe, that the first international biennial of contemporary art in the United States was held. The curators of the biennial, titled Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby, brought together 31 artists from 13 countries to explore notions of exile, heritage, and displacement in an art-rich city whose cultural history mirrored the exhibition’s themes almost to a T.

\r\n\r\n

On July 20, SITE opens a new exhibition, Unsettled Landscapes, which is part of a six-year plan to reshape the very definition of the word biennial. Exhibitions in 2014, 2016, and 2018 will be organized by different teams of curators from throughout the Western Hemisphere, all operating under the banner of a new hub of collaboration called SITElines: New Perspectives of Art in the Americas.

\r\n\r\n

The inaugural biennial at SITE was a bold undertaking. In addition to the risks involved in mounting such a complex international exhibition in a Southwest city whose population topped out at around 56,000, the only large-scale art events in town had been those that honored more traditional regional work— Santa Fe Indian Market and Traditional Spanish Market, for instance.

\r\n\r\n

Luckily, in 1995, the timing was good: Sales of high-end contemporary art were on the upswing nationwide, and collectors from larger metropolitan areas were showing more interest in what Santa Fe had to offer. More than a year before it opened to the public, SITE’s first biennial was gaining a staggering amount of momentum in the art press and international art communities. For the first time, the global contemporary-arts spotlight was aimed squarely on the oldest capital city in North America.

\r\n\r\n

As an organization that has always complemented its exhibitions with special programming and educational outreach, SITE invited the Museum of Fine Arts (now called the New Mexico Museum of Art) to serve as a second exhibition space for Longing and Belonging. Feeling the enthusiasm build for the biennial, the Center for Contemporary Arts and the Governor’s Gallery at the Roundhouse (the State Capitol) planned their own contemporary-art exhibitions to run concurrently with SITE’s inaugural show.

\r\n\r\n

With the inclusion of renowned artists such as Bruce Nauman, Lorna Simpson, Jenny Holzer, and the notoriously controversial Andres Serrano, Longing and Belonging was, as an exhibition, an unqualified success; but SITE Santa Fe organizers made it so much more. It was an event that was as community-minded as it was internationally focused. Besides presenting Robert Ashley’s avant-garde opera Now Eleanor’s Idea, SITE offered lectures, films, concerts, and an array of kid-friendly programming, involving New Mexico artists and galleries at every opportunity.

\r\n\r\n

That multidimensional show model has been at the core of SITE Santa Fe’s operational mission since day one, with more than eight international biennials and numerous exhibitions in between. Attracting tens of thousands of visitors from around the globe, SITE quickly began to draw talent from curators who would go on to join the upper echelons of their field. Francesco Bonami, who curated SITE’s second biennial, TRUCE: Echoes of Art in an Age of Endless Conclusion, was chosen to organize the Venice Biennale in 2003; Dave Hickey, who curated the fourth SITE biennial, Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism, earned a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” after doing so.

\r\n\r\n

AFTER THAT FIRST BIENNIAL, SITE changed directions in the hopes of becoming an internationally known cultural institution with full-time programming. It succeeded in spades, by bringing in work by artists such as Ai Weiwei, Thomas Demand, Wangechi Mutu, William Kentridge, and Raymond Pettibon.

\r\n\r\n

However, the organization’s board and the curatorial staff were restless and more than a little fatigued by the increasing number of biennials popping up across multiple continents. The ephemeral aspects of biennials were also of concern to SITE’s leadership, which involved a number of people: chief curator Irene Hoffman, SITE curator Janet Dees, Unsettled Landscapes cocurators Candice Hopkins and Lucía Sanromán, and five satellite advisers hailing from Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Trinidad, and Newfoundland.

\r\n\r\n

“One of the things we talked about was the sort of discontinuous nature of these exhibitions,” Hoffman says. “We weren’t happy with the idea of artists and curators sort of parachuting into places and then poof, they’re gone. It was long past the due date for reinvention.”

\r\n\r\n

The solution is SITElines: New Perspectives of Art in the Americas, a six-year endeavor that takes to new lengths its dedication to collaboration and long-term focus on a particular theme. Hoffman and her team sought ways to create an international show that was uniquely Santa Fe, while claiming a larger territory that the artists and curators could become greatly familiar with over a longer period of time.

\r\n\r\n

The 30,000 miles of Pan American Highway that connect almost all of the mainland nations of the Americas present plenty of romantic and thought-provoking ideals about Latin American and indigenous cultures, commerce, colonialism, and travel on the open road. “Santa Fe is a place with so many amazing layers of history that are so similar to those of the Pan American Highway,” Hoffman says, “and that’s why using it as the cornerstone of SITElines is such a good fit for us.” Parts of I-25 and adjoining roads are also known as the Pan American Freeway, an official extension of the Pan American Highway that largely follows the historic El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro trade route from the Río Grande valley north of Santa Fe, through Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas, and into Mexico City.

\r\n\r\n

For Unsettled Landscapes, SITE has invited 45 artists from 16 countries, including New Mexico artists such as photographer Patrick Nagatani and mixed-media/installation artist Jamison Chas Banks (Cherokee/Seneca-Cayuga), to explore themes of landscape, territory, and trade in the Americas. Banks’ largescale installation and video project, titled Retour des Centres, examines historical and cultural relationships between the Louisiana Purchase, Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile to Elba and Saint Helena, and the relocation of Banks’ Native ancestors. Visiting artists include the San Francisco multidisciplinary collective Futurefarmers, which will investigate the history and contemporary conditions of New Mexico’s acequias (irrigation canals).

\r\n\r\n

To help emphasize the continuity of SITElines’ three biennial exhibitions, SITE has invited New York–based Mexican artist Pablo Helguera to serve as artist-in-residence over the course of the first exhibition. Helguera’s contribution to Unsettled Landscapes is Nuevo Romancero, Nuevo Mexicano, a new commissioned performance piece and installation that explores New Mexico’s history as a province of Mexico (around 1821 to 1848). Moments in his account of this history are accompanied by songs that Helguera discovered while researching New Mexico’s state archives. Helguera, who has made multiple trips to Santa Fe over the past year, will perform with Santa Fe musicians he met while working on his project in November 2013. Eventually Helguera hopes to turn the performance into a full-length opera, and perhaps perform it as part of a future SITElines exhibition.

\r\n\r\n

“Are we going to avoid every single pitfall of past biennials with this new approach?” Hoffman asks. “Maybe not. But we have a better chance for success by being more aware of our past mistakes, and daring to be different.” Indeed, that approach is what garnered SITE Santa Fe its stellar reputation to begin with.

","teaser_raw":"

NEED TO KNOWUnsettled Landscapes is the first of three biennial exhibitions in SITE Santa Fe’s six-year project SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas. Thursday, July 17, opening night

NEED TO KNOWUnsettled Landscapes is the first of three biennial exhibitions in SITE Santa Fe’s six-year project SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas. Thursday, July 17, opening night

","description":"NEED TO KNOW Unsettled Landscapes is the first of three biennial exhibitions in SITE Santa Fe’s six-year project SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas. Thursday, July 17, opening night events include a cocktail party and exhibition preview (5–7 p.m.) at SITE Santa Fe, and a gala dinner with artists, curators, and special guests (7:30 p.m.) at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Pavilion. Friday, July 18, Unsettled Landscapes artist Pablo Helguera presents a performance at 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. at San Miguel Chapel, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail. Saturday, July 19 (11 a.m.– 2:30 p.m.), the Davidoff Art Initiative presents a SITElines panel discussion featuring artists from the Caribbean at the Armory for the Arts Theater. At 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, Unsettled Landscapes opens to the public at SITE Santa Fe. It runs through Jan. 11, 2015. (505) 989-1199; sitesantafe.org IN JULY 1995, inside an unassuming 19,000-square-foot warehouse near the wellworn train tracks of the Santa Fe Railyard District, a new chapter in the history of contemporary art in America was forged. It was in this space, known as SITE Santa Fe, that the first international biennial of contemporary art in the United States was held. The curators of the biennial, titled Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby , brought together 31 artists from 13 countries to explore notions of exile, heritage, and displacement in an art-rich city whose cultural history mirrored the exhibition’s themes almost to a T. On July 20, SITE opens a new exhibition, Unsettled Landscapes , which is part of a six-year plan to reshape the very definition of the word biennial . Exhibitions in 2014, 2016, and 2018 will be organized by different teams of curators from throughout the Western Hemisphere, all operating under the banner of a new hub of collaboration called SITElines: New Perspectives of Art in the Americas. The inaugural biennial at SITE was a bold undertaking. In addition to the risks involved in mounting such a complex international exhibition in a Southwest city whose population topped out at around 56,000, the only large-scale art events in town had been those that honored more traditional regional work— Santa Fe Indian Market and Traditional Spanish Market, for instance. Luckily, in 1995, the timing was good: Sales of high-end contemporary art were on the upswing nationwide, and collectors from larger metropolitan areas were showing more interest in what Santa Fe had to offer. More than a year before it opened to the public, SITE’s first biennial was gaining a staggering amount of momentum in the art press and international art communities. For the first time, the global contemporary-arts spotlight was aimed squarely on the oldest capital city in North America. As an organization that has always complemented its exhibitions with special programming and educational outreach, SITE invited the Museum of Fine Arts (now called the New Mexico Museum of Art) to serve as a second exhibition space for Longing and Belonging. Feeling the enthusiasm build for the biennial, the Center for Contemporary Arts and the Governor’s Gallery at the Roundhouse (the State Capitol) planned their own contemporary-art exhibitions to run concurrently with SITE’s inaugural show. With the inclusion of renowned artists such as Bruce Nauman, Lorna Simpson, Jenny Holzer, and the notoriously controversial Andres Serrano, Longing and Belonging was, as an exhibition, an unqualified success; but SITE Santa Fe organizers made it so much more. It was an event that was as community-minded as it was internationally focused. Besides presenting Robert Ashley’s avant-garde opera Now Eleanor’s Idea , SITE offered lectures, films, concerts, and an array of kid-friendly programming, involving New Mexico artists and galleries at every opportunity. That multidimensional show model has been at the core of SITE Santa Fe’s operational mission since day one, with more than eight international biennials and numerous exhibitions in between. Attracting tens of thousands of visitors from around the globe, SITE quickly began to draw talent from curators who would go on to join the upper echelons of their field. Francesco Bonami, who curated SITE’s second biennial, TRUCE: Echoes of Art in an Age of Endless Conclusion , was chosen to organize the Venice Biennale in 2003; Dave Hickey, who curated the fourth SITE biennial, Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism , earned a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” after doing so. AFTER THAT FIRST BIENNIAL, SITE changed directions in the hopes of becoming an internationally known cultural institution with full-time programming. It succeeded in spades, by bringing in work by artists such as Ai Weiwei, Thomas Demand, Wangechi Mutu, William Kentridge, and Raymond Pettibon. However, the organization’s board and the curatorial staff were restless and more than a little fatigued by the increasing number of biennials popping up across multiple continents. The ephemeral aspects of biennials were also of concern to SITE’s leadership, which involved a number of people: chief curator Irene Hoffman, SITE curator Janet Dees, Unsettled Landscapes cocurators Candice Hopkins and Lucía Sanromán, and five satellite advisers hailing from Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Trinidad, and Newfoundland. “One of the things we talked about was the sort of discontinuous nature of these exhibitions,” Hoffman says. “We weren’t happy with the idea of artists and curators sort of parachuting into places and then poof, they’re gone. It was long past the due date for reinvention.” The solution is SITElines: New Perspectives of Art in the Americas, a six-year endeavor that takes to new lengths its dedication to collaboration and long-term focus on a particular theme. Hoffman and her team sought ways to create an international show that was uniquely Santa Fe, while claiming a larger territory that the artists and curators could become greatly familiar with over a longer period of time. The 30,000 miles of Pan American Highway that connect almost all of the mainland nations of the Americas present plenty of romantic and thought-provoking ideals about Latin American and indigenous cultures, commerce, colonialism, and travel on the open road. “Santa Fe is a place with so many amazing layers of history that are so similar to those of the Pan American Highway,” Hoffman says, “and that’s why using it as the cornerstone of SITElines is such a good fit for us.” Parts of I-25 and adjoining roads are also known as the Pan American Freeway, an official extension of the Pan American Highway that largely follows the historic El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro trade route from the Río Grande valley north of Santa Fe, through Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas, and into Mexico City. For Unsettled Landscapes , SITE has invited 45 artists from 16 countries, including New Mexico artists such as photographer Patrick Nagatani and mixed-media/installation artist Jamison Chas Banks (Cherokee/Seneca-Cayuga), to explore themes of landscape, territory, and trade in the Americas. Banks’ largescale installation and video project, titled Retour des Centres , examines historical and cultural relationships between the Louisiana Purchase, Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile to Elba and Saint Helena, and the relocation of Banks’ Native ancestors. Visiting artists include the San Francisco multidisciplinary collective Futurefarmers, which will investigate the history and contemporary conditions of New Mexico’s acequias (irrigation canals). To help emphasize the continuity of SITElines’ three biennial exhibitions, SITE has invited New York–based Mexican artist Pablo Helguera to serve as artist-in-residence over the course of the first exhibition. Helguera’s contribution to Unsettled Landscapes is Nuevo Romancero, Nuevo Mexicano, a new commissioned performance piece and installation that explores New Mexico’s history as a province of Mexico (around 1821 to 1848). Moments in his account of this history are accompanied by songs that Helguera discovered while researching New Mexico’s state archives. Helguera, who has made multiple trips to Santa Fe over the past year, will perform with Santa Fe musicians he met while working on his project in November 2013. Eventually Helguera hopes to turn the performance into a full-length opera, and perhaps perform it as part of a future SITElines exhibition. “Are we going to avoid every single pitfall of past biennials with this new approach?” Hoffman asks. “Maybe not. But we have a better chance for success by being more aware of our past mistakes, and daring to be different.” Indeed, that approach is what garnered SITE Santa Fe its stellar reputation to begin with.","id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f990","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/artscapes-july-2014-86833/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/artscapes-july-2014-86833/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/artscapes-july-2014-86833/","metaTitle":"Art Without Borders","metaDescription":"

NEED TO KNOWUnsettled Landscapes is the first of three biennial exhibitions in SITE Santa Fe’s six-year project SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas. Thursday, July 17, opening night

","cleanDescription":"NEED TO KNOW Unsettled Landscapes is the first of three biennial exhibitions in SITE Santa Fe’s six-year project SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas. Thursday, July 17, opening night events include a cocktail party and exhibition preview (5–7 p.m.) at SITE Santa Fe, and a gala dinner with artists, curators, and special guests (7:30 p.m.) at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Pavilion. Friday, July 18, Unsettled Landscapes artist Pablo Helguera presents a performance at 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. at San Miguel Chapel, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail. Saturday, July 19 (11 a.m.– 2:30 p.m.), the Davidoff Art Initiative presents a SITElines panel discussion featuring artists from the Caribbean at the Armory for the Arts Theater. At 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, Unsettled Landscapes opens to the public at SITE Santa Fe. It runs through Jan. 11, 2015. (505) 989-1199; sitesantafe.org IN JULY 1995, inside an unassuming 19,000-square-foot warehouse near the wellworn train tracks of the Santa Fe Railyard District, a new chapter in the history of contemporary art in America was forged. It was in this space, known as SITE Santa Fe, that the first international biennial of contemporary art in the United States was held. The curators of the biennial, titled Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby , brought together 31 artists from 13 countries to explore notions of exile, heritage, and displacement in an art-rich city whose cultural history mirrored the exhibition’s themes almost to a T. On July 20, SITE opens a new exhibition, Unsettled Landscapes , which is part of a six-year plan to reshape the very definition of the word biennial . Exhibitions in 2014, 2016, and 2018 will be organized by different teams of curators from throughout the Western Hemisphere, all operating under the banner of a new hub of collaboration called SITElines: New Perspectives of Art in the Americas. The inaugural biennial at SITE was a bold undertaking. In addition to the risks involved in mounting such a complex international exhibition in a Southwest city whose population topped out at around 56,000, the only large-scale art events in town had been those that honored more traditional regional work— Santa Fe Indian Market and Traditional Spanish Market, for instance. Luckily, in 1995, the timing was good: Sales of high-end contemporary art were on the upswing nationwide, and collectors from larger metropolitan areas were showing more interest in what Santa Fe had to offer. More than a year before it opened to the public, SITE’s first biennial was gaining a staggering amount of momentum in the art press and international art communities. For the first time, the global contemporary-arts spotlight was aimed squarely on the oldest capital city in North America. As an organization that has always complemented its exhibitions with special programming and educational outreach, SITE invited the Museum of Fine Arts (now called the New Mexico Museum of Art) to serve as a second exhibition space for Longing and Belonging. Feeling the enthusiasm build for the biennial, the Center for Contemporary Arts and the Governor’s Gallery at the Roundhouse (the State Capitol) planned their own contemporary-art exhibitions to run concurrently with SITE’s inaugural show. With the inclusion of renowned artists such as Bruce Nauman, Lorna Simpson, Jenny Holzer, and the notoriously controversial Andres Serrano, Longing and Belonging was, as an exhibition, an unqualified success; but SITE Santa Fe organizers made it so much more. It was an event that was as community-minded as it was internationally focused. Besides presenting Robert Ashley’s avant-garde opera Now Eleanor’s Idea , SITE offered lectures, films, concerts, and an array of kid-friendly programming, involving New Mexico artists and galleries at every opportunity. That multidimensional show model has been at the core of SITE Santa Fe’s operational mission since day one, with more than eight international biennials and numerous exhibitions in between. Attracting tens of thousands of visitors from around the globe, SITE quickly began to draw talent from curators who would go on to join the upper echelons of their field. Francesco Bonami, who curated SITE’s second biennial, TRUCE: Echoes of Art in an Age of Endless Conclusion , was chosen to organize the Venice Biennale in 2003; Dave Hickey, who curated the fourth SITE biennial, Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism , earned a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” after doing so. AFTER THAT FIRST BIENNIAL, SITE changed directions in the hopes of becoming an internationally known cultural institution with full-time programming. It succeeded in spades, by bringing in work by artists such as Ai Weiwei, Thomas Demand, Wangechi Mutu, William Kentridge, and Raymond Pettibon. However, the organization’s board and the curatorial staff were restless and more than a little fatigued by the increasing number of biennials popping up across multiple continents. The ephemeral aspects of biennials were also of concern to SITE’s leadership, which involved a number of people: chief curator Irene Hoffman, SITE curator Janet Dees, Unsettled Landscapes cocurators Candice Hopkins and Lucía Sanromán, and five satellite advisers hailing from Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Trinidad, and Newfoundland. “One of the things we talked about was the sort of discontinuous nature of these exhibitions,” Hoffman says. “We weren’t happy with the idea of artists and curators sort of parachuting into places and then poof, they’re gone. It was long past the due date for reinvention.” The solution is SITElines: New Perspectives of Art in the Americas, a six-year endeavor that takes to new lengths its dedication to collaboration and long-term focus on a particular theme. Hoffman and her team sought ways to create an international show that was uniquely Santa Fe, while claiming a larger territory that the artists and curators could become greatly familiar with over a longer period of time. The 30,000 miles of Pan American Highway that connect almost all of the mainland nations of the Americas present plenty of romantic and thought-provoking ideals about Latin American and indigenous cultures, commerce, colonialism, and travel on the open road. “Santa Fe is a place with so many amazing layers of history that are so similar to those of the Pan American Highway,” Hoffman says, “and that’s why using it as the cornerstone of SITElines is such a good fit for us.” Parts of I-25 and adjoining roads are also known as the Pan American Freeway, an official extension of the Pan American Highway that largely follows the historic El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro trade route from the Río Grande valley north of Santa Fe, through Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas, and into Mexico City. For Unsettled Landscapes , SITE has invited 45 artists from 16 countries, including New Mexico artists such as photographer Patrick Nagatani and mixed-media/installation artist Jamison Chas Banks (Cherokee/Seneca-Cayuga), to explore themes of landscape, territory, and trade in the Americas. Banks’ largescale installation and video project, titled Retour des Centres , examines historical and cultural relationships between the Louisiana Purchase, Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile to Elba and Saint Helena, and the relocation of Banks’ Native ancestors. Visiting artists include the San Francisco multidisciplinary collective Futurefarmers, which will investigate the history and contemporary conditions of New Mexico’s acequias (irrigation canals). To help emphasize the continuity of SITElines’ three biennial exhibitions, SITE has invited New York–based Mexican artist Pablo Helguera to serve as artist-in-residence over the course of the first exhibition. Helguera’s contribution to Unsettled Landscapes is Nuevo Romancero, Nuevo Mexicano, a new commissioned performance piece and installation that explores New Mexico’s history as a province of Mexico (around 1821 to 1848). Moments in his account of this history are accompanied by songs that Helguera discovered while researching New Mexico’s state archives. Helguera, who has made multiple trips to Santa Fe over the past year, will perform with Santa Fe musicians he met while working on his project in November 2013. Eventually Helguera hopes to turn the performance into a full-length opera, and perhaps perform it as part of a future SITElines exhibition. “Are we going to avoid every single pitfall of past biennials with this new approach?” Hoffman asks. “Maybe not. But we have a better chance for success by being more aware of our past mistakes, and daring to be different.” Indeed, that approach is what garnered SITE Santa Fe its stellar reputation to begin with.","publish_start_moment":"2014-06-18T13:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.931Z"},{"_id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f98f","author_id":"58b4b2404c2774661570f240","title":"What's Happening","slug":"whats-happening-july-2014-86673","publish_start":"2014-06-11T12:00:00.000Z","enable_comments":true,"categories_ids":["58b4b2404c2774661570f2dc","58b4b2404c2774661570f2b4","58c834b11f16f9392cf0992a"],"tags_ids":["59090d23e1efff4c9916fa71","59090ce8e1efff4c9916fa49","59090e46e1efff4c9916fb37"],"cms_tags_ids":["58b061ec6a2b0936c34a23ea"],"enabled":true,"custom_tagline":"Add these events to your plans for New Mexico summer adventures.","created":"2014-06-11T12:00:46.000Z","legacy_id":"86673","blog":"magazine","_title_sort":"what's happening","updated":"2017-10-31T21:31:32.559Z","active":true,"description_raw":"

JULY 1–6, 19, 20

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NORTHWEST FUN FESTS\r\nThe 28th Freedom Days Celebration in Farmington (July 1–6) includes a brass-band concert in Berg Park, a nighttime electric light parade, and one of the region’s largest car shows. A gem and mineral show attracts rock hounds from across the Southwest, and no Independence Day celebration would be complete without a magnificent fireworks display (505-326-7602; farmingtonnm.org). At the Animas River Blues and Brews Fest in Aztec (July 19), Janis Joplin– esque headliner Teresa James and her Rhythm Tramps hit the Riverside Park stage, along with Albuquerque bluesman Todd Tijerina, among others (505-330-4616; animasriverblues.com). The 32nd Land of Enchantment Rod Run in downtown Farmington (July 20) celebrates New Mexico’s vibrant classic-car and lowrider cultures. Many merchants and eateries keep their doors open late during this evening event. (505) 599- 1419; farmingtonnm.org

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JULY 4\r\nDÍA DE LA INDEPENDENCIA\r\nThe 126th Las Vegas Fiestas features a parade, live music, and a crafts fair in Plaza Park (505- 454-1401; mynm.us/meadowfourth). The Freedom Fourth Celebration at Balloon Fiesta Park in Albuquerque includes a fireworks display, a car show, a beer garden, and a performance by Grammy-winning Nashville star Wynonna Judd (505-768-3556; mynm.us/abqfourth). Smoke on the Water in Clovis features patriotic music, food, and the biggest fireworks display on the Eastern Plains (575-763-3435; clovisnm.org). In Socorro, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology puts its explosives expertise to good use for the 22nd July 4th Celebration and fireworks display. (575) 835-5688; nmtpas.org

\r\n\r\n

JULY 4–6\r\nLOW AND SLOW\r\nThe 11th Pork and Brew BBQ State Championship held at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho draws more than 20,000 fanatics and some of the nation’s top pit masters. Sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society, the event gives these seasoned cooks a chance to compete for prizes—and to make headway in earning a finalist spot in the American Royal World Series of Barbecue. “At this event,” says veteran barbecue competitor Kelly Wertz of Great Bend, Kansas, whose team took top honors at the 2013 Pork & Brew, “you have to be prepared for extreme changes in the weather. It keeps the pit masters and teams on their toes.” The Santa Ana Star Center introduces a new indoor-outdoor floor plan this year, so visitors will have plenty of room to stretch their wings (and drumsticks, and fists full of locally crafted beer). (888) 746-7262; rioranchonm.org

JULY 14, 26\r\nFEAST DAYS\r\nLocated about 20 miles southwest of Santa Fe among the cone-topped white cliffs of the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, Cochiti Pueblo remains a vibrant center of daily life and Pueblo cultural traditions. In celebration of its patron saint, San Buenaventura, the Pueblo hosts a feast day on July 14. Besides viewing a traditional corn dance, visitors can sample Native foods and shop at arts-and-crafts vendors, many of whom create storytellerfigurine pottery in a style influenced by famed Cochiti potter Helen Cordero (505-465-2244; pueblodecochiti.org). On July 26, Santa Ana Pueblo, located eight miles northwest of Bernalillo, hosts a feast day and corn dance honoring its patron saint, Saint Anne. Native artists will sell pottery and fiber arts alongside vendors and cooks offering products that utilize the Pueblo’s legendary blue corn. (505) 771-6700; santaana.org

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JULY 26–AUGUST 3\r\nMUDSLINGERS\r\nSilver City is nestled near the cottonwoodgilded Mimbres Valley, an area in southern New Mexico once occupied by the Mimbres people. The valley’s rich deposits of clay inspired its ancient inhabitants to create some of the most striking functional and decorative pottery in the Southwest. Since 2012, ceramist Lee Gruber has overseen the Silver City Clay Festival, aka CLAY. “The Mimbres culture left behind a marvelous record of earthenware artifacts that speak to the importance of something as simple as mud, or clay, to the creative and cultural enrichment of a people,” Gruber says. The program includes free kids’ pottery classes, archaeological tours, a mini film festival, and the juried international exhibitions Neo-Mimbreño and A Tile & A Vessel. Festivalgoers and serious ceramists can sign up for an array of two- and three-day workshops, including “Mata Ortiz Pottery,” led by artists Diego Valles and Carla Martínez. Free lectures such as “1000 Years of Upland Mogollon Pottery” give further insight into the valley’s enduring love affair with clay. (575) 538-5560; clayfestival.com

","teaser_raw":"

JULY 1–6, 19, 20

NORTHWEST FUN FESTS The 28th Freedom Days Celebration in Farmington (July 1–6) includes a brass-band concert in Berg Park, a nighttime electric light parade, and one of the region’s

NORTHWEST FUN FESTS The 28th Freedom Days Celebration in Farmington (July 1–6) includes a brass-band concert in Berg Park, a nighttime electric light parade, and one of the region’s

","description":"JULY 1–6, 19, 20 NORTHWEST FUN FESTS The 28th Freedom Days Celebration in Farmington (July 1–6) includes a brass-band concert in Berg Park, a nighttime electric light parade, and one of the region’s largest car shows. A gem and mineral show attracts rock hounds from across the Southwest, and no Independence Day celebration would be complete without a magnificent fireworks display (505-326-7602; farmingtonnm.org). At the Animas River Blues and Brews Fest in Aztec (July 19), Janis Joplin– esque headliner Teresa James and her Rhythm Tramps hit the Riverside Park stage, along with Albuquerque bluesman Todd Tijerina, among others (505-330-4616; animasriverblues.com). The 32nd Land of Enchantment Rod Run in downtown Farmington (July 20) celebrates New Mexico’s vibrant classic-car and lowrider cultures. Many merchants and eateries keep their doors open late during this evening event. (505) 599- 1419; farmingtonnm.org JULY 4 DÍA DE LA INDEPENDENCIA The 126th Las Vegas Fiestas features a parade, live music, and a crafts fair in Plaza Park (505- 454-1401; mynm.us/meadowfourth). The Freedom Fourth Celebration at Balloon Fiesta Park in Albuquerque includes a fireworks display, a car show, a beer garden, and a performance by Grammy-winning Nashville star Wynonna Judd (505-768-3556; mynm.us/abqfourth). Smoke on the Water in Clovis features patriotic music, food, and the biggest fireworks display on the Eastern Plains (575-763-3435; clovisnm.org). In Socorro, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology puts its explosives expertise to good use for the 22nd July 4th Celebration and fireworks display. (575) 835-5688; nmtpas.org JULY 4–6 LOW AND SLOW The 11th Pork and Brew BBQ State Championship held at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho draws more than 20,000 fanatics and some of the nation’s top pit masters. Sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society, the event gives these seasoned cooks a chance to compete for prizes—and to make headway in earning a finalist spot in the American Royal World Series of Barbecue. “At this event,” says veteran barbecue competitor Kelly Wertz of Great Bend, Kansas, whose team took top honors at the 2013 Pork & Brew, “you have to be prepared for extreme changes in the weather. It keeps the pit masters and teams on their toes.” The Santa Ana Star Center introduces a new indoor-outdoor floor plan this year, so visitors will have plenty of room to stretch their wings (and drumsticks, and fists full of locally crafted beer). (888) 746-7262; rioranchonm.org JULY 5, 12 SPIN CYCLES The USA Cycling–sanctioned Gran Fondo is a 105-mile race through Taos, Mora, and Angel Fire (July 5). If the Gran Fondo and 84-mile Medio Fondo routes seem a bit ambitious, there’s also a 46-mile Micro Fondo route (719-434-4200; taossportsalliance.com/ bicycling). Mountain bikers, take note: The New Mexico Endurance Series presents the Chama Redneck Epic, a 101-mile race from Chama to Antonito, Colorado (July 12). Riders may instead choose to ride in shorter races. nmes.wordpress.com/rides/chama-redneck-epic JULY 14, 26 FEAST DAYS Located about 20 miles southwest of Santa Fe among the cone-topped white cliffs of the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, Cochiti Pueblo remains a vibrant center of daily life and Pueblo cultural traditions. In celebration of its patron saint, San Buenaventura, the Pueblo hosts a feast day on July 14. Besides viewing a traditional corn dance, visitors can sample Native foods and shop at arts-and-crafts vendors, many of whom create storytellerfigurine pottery in a style influenced by famed Cochiti potter Helen Cordero (505-465-2244; pueblodecochiti.org). On July 26, Santa Ana Pueblo, located eight miles northwest of Bernalillo, hosts a feast day and corn dance honoring its patron saint, Saint Anne. Native artists will sell pottery and fiber arts alongside vendors and cooks offering products that utilize the Pueblo’s legendary blue corn. (505) 771-6700; santaana.org JULY 26–AUGUST 3 MUDSLINGERS Silver City is nestled near the cottonwoodgilded Mimbres Valley, an area in southern New Mexico once occupied by the Mimbres people. The valley’s rich deposits of clay inspired its ancient inhabitants to create some of the most striking functional and decorative pottery in the Southwest. Since 2012, ceramist Lee Gruber has overseen the Silver City Clay Festival, aka CLAY. “The Mimbres culture left behind a marvelous record of earthenware artifacts that speak to the importance of something as simple as mud, or clay, to the creative and cultural enrichment of a people,” Gruber says. The program includes free kids’ pottery classes, archaeological tours, a mini film festival, and the juried international exhibitions Neo-Mimbreño and A Tile & A Vessel. Festivalgoers and serious ceramists can sign up for an array of two- and three-day workshops, including “Mata Ortiz Pottery,” led by artists Diego Valles and Carla Martínez. Free lectures such as “1000 Years of Upland Mogollon Pottery” give further insight into the valley’s enduring love affair with clay. (575) 538-5560; clayfestival.com","id":"58b4b2804c2774661570f98f","url":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/whats-happening-july-2014-86673/","commentsUrl":"/nmmagazine/articles/post/whats-happening-july-2014-86673/#comments","absoluteUrl":"https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/whats-happening-july-2014-86673/","metaTitle":"What's Happening","metaDescription":"

JULY 1–6, 19, 20

NORTHWEST FUN FESTS The 28th Freedom Days Celebration in Farmington (July 1–6) includes a brass-band concert in Berg Park, a nighttime electric light parade, and one of the region’s

","cleanDescription":"JULY 1–6, 19, 20 NORTHWEST FUN FESTS The 28th Freedom Days Celebration in Farmington (July 1–6) includes a brass-band concert in Berg Park, a nighttime electric light parade, and one of the region’s largest car shows. A gem and mineral show attracts rock hounds from across the Southwest, and no Independence Day celebration would be complete without a magnificent fireworks display (505-326-7602; farmingtonnm.org). At the Animas River Blues and Brews Fest in Aztec (July 19), Janis Joplin– esque headliner Teresa James and her Rhythm Tramps hit the Riverside Park stage, along with Albuquerque bluesman Todd Tijerina, among others (505-330-4616; animasriverblues.com). The 32nd Land of Enchantment Rod Run in downtown Farmington (July 20) celebrates New Mexico’s vibrant classic-car and lowrider cultures. Many merchants and eateries keep their doors open late during this evening event. (505) 599- 1419; farmingtonnm.org JULY 4 DÍA DE LA INDEPENDENCIA The 126th Las Vegas Fiestas features a parade, live music, and a crafts fair in Plaza Park (505- 454-1401; mynm.us/meadowfourth). The Freedom Fourth Celebration at Balloon Fiesta Park in Albuquerque includes a fireworks display, a car show, a beer garden, and a performance by Grammy-winning Nashville star Wynonna Judd (505-768-3556; mynm.us/abqfourth). Smoke on the Water in Clovis features patriotic music, food, and the biggest fireworks display on the Eastern Plains (575-763-3435; clovisnm.org). In Socorro, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology puts its explosives expertise to good use for the 22nd July 4th Celebration and fireworks display. (575) 835-5688; nmtpas.org JULY 4–6 LOW AND SLOW The 11th Pork and Brew BBQ State Championship held at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho draws more than 20,000 fanatics and some of the nation’s top pit masters. Sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society, the event gives these seasoned cooks a chance to compete for prizes—and to make headway in earning a finalist spot in the American Royal World Series of Barbecue. “At this event,” says veteran barbecue competitor Kelly Wertz of Great Bend, Kansas, whose team took top honors at the 2013 Pork & Brew, “you have to be prepared for extreme changes in the weather. It keeps the pit masters and teams on their toes.” The Santa Ana Star Center introduces a new indoor-outdoor floor plan this year, so visitors will have plenty of room to stretch their wings (and drumsticks, and fists full of locally crafted beer). (888) 746-7262; rioranchonm.org JULY 5, 12 SPIN CYCLES The USA Cycling–sanctioned Gran Fondo is a 105-mile race through Taos, Mora, and Angel Fire (July 5). If the Gran Fondo and 84-mile Medio Fondo routes seem a bit ambitious, there’s also a 46-mile Micro Fondo route (719-434-4200; taossportsalliance.com/ bicycling). Mountain bikers, take note: The New Mexico Endurance Series presents the Chama Redneck Epic, a 101-mile race from Chama to Antonito, Colorado (July 12). Riders may instead choose to ride in shorter races. nmes.wordpress.com/rides/chama-redneck-epic JULY 14, 26 FEAST DAYS Located about 20 miles southwest of Santa Fe among the cone-topped white cliffs of the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, Cochiti Pueblo remains a vibrant center of daily life and Pueblo cultural traditions. In celebration of its patron saint, San Buenaventura, the Pueblo hosts a feast day on July 14. Besides viewing a traditional corn dance, visitors can sample Native foods and shop at arts-and-crafts vendors, many of whom create storytellerfigurine pottery in a style influenced by famed Cochiti potter Helen Cordero (505-465-2244; pueblodecochiti.org). On July 26, Santa Ana Pueblo, located eight miles northwest of Bernalillo, hosts a feast day and corn dance honoring its patron saint, Saint Anne. Native artists will sell pottery and fiber arts alongside vendors and cooks offering products that utilize the Pueblo’s legendary blue corn. (505) 771-6700; santaana.org JULY 26–AUGUST 3 MUDSLINGERS Silver City is nestled near the cottonwoodgilded Mimbres Valley, an area in southern New Mexico once occupied by the Mimbres people. The valley’s rich deposits of clay inspired its ancient inhabitants to create some of the most striking functional and decorative pottery in the Southwest. Since 2012, ceramist Lee Gruber has overseen the Silver City Clay Festival, aka CLAY. “The Mimbres culture left behind a marvelous record of earthenware artifacts that speak to the importance of something as simple as mud, or clay, to the creative and cultural enrichment of a people,” Gruber says. The program includes free kids’ pottery classes, archaeological tours, a mini film festival, and the juried international exhibitions Neo-Mimbreño and A Tile & A Vessel. Festivalgoers and serious ceramists can sign up for an array of two- and three-day workshops, including “Mata Ortiz Pottery,” led by artists Diego Valles and Carla Martínez. Free lectures such as “1000 Years of Upland Mogollon Pottery” give further insight into the valley’s enduring love affair with clay. (575) 538-5560; clayfestival.com","publish_start_moment":"2014-06-11T12:00:00.000Z","publish_end_moment":"2019-02-22T15:30:06.931Z"}]});